The Taoiseach formally announced the deferral of the referendum on judicial accountability, telling the House he was "not going to allow a constitutional arm of the State to be used as a political football in any referendum".

Opposition leaders rejected Mr Ahern's comments and condemned the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, as inept and incompetent in his handling of the issue.

The Fine Gael leader, Mr Michael Noonan, said Mr O'Donoghue should "consider his position because in the history of the State this is the first time that the incompetence and arrogance of a Minister has brought about a situation where a constitutional amendment must be withdrawn from the House".

He said they could "rescue something from this fiasco" by referring the legislation to the all-party justice committee which would "hear evidence, listen to outside submissions and would then report to the House in a manner which would allow us to proceed on an all-party basis to a referendum".

Mr Noonan added: "Let us have outside submissions and not seek to divide the country on a matter as fundamental to our democracy as the separation of powers."

The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said the Minister's proposals for the referendum legislation were argued with "such extraordinary ineptitude" and were "ignominiously withdrawn". The Minister's amendments to the legislation were offered in "such a ham-fisted way" that the Bill had to be withdrawn.

During the Order of Business, Mr Ahern said Mr O'Donoghue had made "every reasonable effort" to accommodate Opposition concerns as to the wording of the proposed constitutional amendment but despite this it was not possible to reach agreement.

Accordingly, it would be "inappropriate" to put the referendum before the people on June 7th, along with three other referendums. He said the Government believed "a fundamental proposal" dealing with the separation of powers should not proceed when there was such "fundamental disagreement".

Mr Ahern said anybody who believed the row started with the legislation was not "well briefed" on the situation. He did not want to be "adversarial" but said the Opposition had endorsed one aspect of the Constitution Committee's report that judicial conduct could be reviewed by the judicial council, which included lay people.

But the Opposition submitted amendments to the legislation and insisted in discussions with the Minister that "the entire membership of the Judicial Council should be set out in the Constitution". He pointed out that there were four Government amendments, not 14 as claimed on Wednesday.

He said the Government's proposed constitutional amendment was a significant improvement on existing constitutional provisions. There was no agreement and "I am not going to allow a constitutional arm of the State to be used as a political football in any referendum".

Both Mr Noonan and Mr Quinn rejected the Taoiseach's comments. Mr Noonan said Mr Ahern's comments were "not in accordance with the facts" while Mr Quinn suggested he was "poorly briefed" and his remarks were not true.

The Taoiseach replied, however, that it was unfortunate that the legislation and referendum could not go ahead based on the work of the all-party Constitution Committee and the good work involved in the Denham report.