The Taoiseach criticised the Labour leader's attitude to the religious orders as he defended the Government's responses to the Laffoy commission on child abuse.
When Mr Pat Rabbitte challenged the deal made by the Government with the religious orders, Mr Ahern referred to the State's responsibility to the children who were abused.
"The State in this case is under an obligation. Over a long period of time we sought to take a substantial amount of resources from religious institutions, but the State made the decisions and we were right in what we did. It is a deplorable act to try to jump off a few religious organisations and make them bankrupt and that is really what Deputy Rabbitte is about."
Later, Mr Rabbitte said he did not understand the Taoiseach's remark, but it sounded naughty.
He challenged Mr Ahern to say why the Government had decided it should apportion liability for people abused in residential institutions on the basis of capping the liability of religious congregations at €128 million, while the liability of the taxpayer was unlimited.
"Now that the Laffoy interim report has been published, it is clear in terms of the discovery Ms Justice Laffoy sought to make, that her commission was seeking to make a judgment on the same point. She sought discovery to establish the basis on which the Government decided to assume liability for all cases, irrespective of circumstance."
However, she had been refused discovery, said Mr Rabbitte. "Was the reason for this refusal the same as the reason no papers were presented to Government, namely because the papers do not exist?"
Mr Ahern said that anything Mr Justice Ryan, Ms Justice Laffoy's successor, required would, hopefully, be made available to assist him. "Since the establishment of the commission, 16 discovery orders have been made to the Department, 12 of which were delivered within the timeframe provided. In the case of six of those, extensions of time were granted by the commission. The difficulties encountered with the other four were subsequently resolved so 16 cases were dealt with."
He added that the problems facing the commission would not have been resolved simply by providing more resources, but the Government had tried its best to provide them. "The clear message from the reviews conducted by the Attorney General and Mr Justice Ryan is that changes are required in the procedures of the investigation committee and in the legislation."
Mr Rabbitte said the reason there were no papers being furnished on discovery to Ms Justice Laffoy was because they did not exist. "The Taoiseach and the Minister plucked a figure out of the air."
He asked: "Did the Government do any State audit of liability in these circumstances? We know that the Comptroller & Auditor General did such an audit and believed the liability could reach a thousand million euros. We know that Government approval took place on the basis of an oral presentation, no memo to Government by the then minister for education, Dr Woods."
Later, during a debate on the commission's report, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, said an impression was being created that the Department would not hand over documents.
"We are talking about documents the Department might have had 50, 60 or 70 years ago. We do not know whether the Department had them or not. They are documents that might have been lost maybe as far back as the middle of the second World War. They might have been relevant. I think any reasonable person trying to meet a request like that would find it very difficult."
He was replying to Mr Rabbitte, the Fine Gael spokeswoman on education, Ms Olwyn Enright, and Labour spokeswoman Ms Jan O'Sullivan.
