The Government has approved legislation to award pensions to the three people who resigned over the Sheedy crisis.

The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, told the House ail that the Cabinet had approved a Bill at its weekly meeting yesterday, and that it would be presented to the House for circulation to deputies.

A pension of £40,000 a year will be paid to the former Supreme Court judge, Mr Hugh O'Flaherty, and £30,000 to the former High Court judge, Mr Cyril Kelly. The former Dublin county circuit court registrar, Mr Michael Quinlan, will receive an annual pension of £15,000.

Speaking during Justice questions, Mr O'Donoghue reiterated the legal advice the Government received, that it would be unconstitutional to make pensions conditional on appearing before an Oireachtas committee or providing some explanation or self-justification.

Fine Gael's Justice spokesman, Mr Jim Higgins, who raised the issue, called on the Minister to make available to the House ail, the legal advice he received. Mr O'Donoghue said, however, there was no precedent for making such legal advice available.

Mr Higgins demanded that the Government make the "very generous terms" of the pensions to the two judges, conditional on co-operating with the Oireachtas committee or whatever inquiry was put in place.

He said that in any other situation where public servants "quite obviously abused their positions and where public money was involved, these people would unceremoniously be given the red card and no pensions would be involved. No pensions should be involved if they do not co-operate with what is in the public interest - the establishment of the facts behind this saga."

He referred to the former Mr Justice O'Flaherty's original offer to come before the Committee on Justice, Equality and Women's Rights, "without any invitation" to make a full statement and answer questions. Mr O'Flaherty had offered to do this and "saw no constitutional or other impediment" but he "has now declined to come before the committee".

Mr Higgins said every possible method should be used to ensure the judges co-operated with whatever investigation was under way to establish "why they and others did what they did and which led to the unprecedented constitutional crisis just six weeks ago".

The Minister stressed that the Government took the view that the errors of judgment involved were very serious. However, all three individuals "took the honourable course of resigning. They collectively helped to avert what was a very difficult, if not unprecedented, situation from a constitutional point of view."