Northern Ireland Human Rights chief Professor Brice Dickson faced new pressure to resign tonight as he came under fierce attack from unionist and nationalist politicians.
Professor Dickson has been criticised after he accepted he blundered over his handling of the Holy Cross school row in north Belfast.
A senior Ulster Unionist has now claimed Professor Dickson failed to deliver a Bill of Rights despite going on a three-year "rampage of consultation".
Controversy has raged since a Joint Parliamentary Committee report raised questions about the independence of the Human Rights Commission, set up under the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
Even though the commission agreed to fund a legal case against the policing of loyalist protests at the Catholic Primary School in September 2001, Professor Dickson said privately that he held serious reservations.
Catholic parents and their children had to be given police protection on their way to and from Holy Cross because of violent loyalist protests.
In a letter to former chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan, he wrote: "I myself am strongly of the view that the policing of the protest at the Holy Cross school has not been in breach of the Human Rights Act."
Solicitors for an unnamed Holy Cross parent who mounted the judicial review action claimed this was a breach of trust.
Mr Dickson's leadership was further undermined by the resignation of three members of his team in the last year.
Ms Inez McCormack and Ms Christine Bell, who walked out last September, claimed plans for a Bill of Rights threatened to erode the ethos of the Belfast Agreement and set fair employment legislation back 30 years.
Mr Patrick Yu, executive director of the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities, who resigned three weeks ago, said the commission risked undermining equality protections in the Agreement.
Professor Dickson remained tight-lipped about his future tonight, while criticism continued to mount.
But senior Ulster Unionist Mr Dermot Nesbit said Professor Dickson's problems were of his own making.
"He has not delivered what he was supposed to do," he said.
"Creating a Bill of Rights was a reasonably simple exercise but after three years we are no further forward.
"He made a mountain out of a molehill by going on an expensive and expansive rampage of consultation."
PA