Burke faces ruling on €10.5m legal bill

FORMER minister, Ray Burke will learn today if taxpayers will be forced to pick up the €10.5m legal bill from his long-running involvement with the Planning Tribunal.

The inquiry’s chairman, Judge Alan Mahon, will deliver an important ruling at Dublin Castle this morning on whether the retired politician must pay his own massive legal costs. It is widely believed that the former Dublin North TD will be awarded only a fraction of his own legal bill largely as a result of the adverse findings against him in the tribunal’s landmark report published two years ago.

It deemed that Mr Burke had received a series of corrupt payments totalling over €285,000 during the 1980s as well as being given his former home in Swords, which sold a few years ago for almost €4m, for virtually nothing in suspicious circumstances. The report also ruled that the former Fianna Fáil minister had obstructed and hindered the work of the inquiry on 14 separate counts.