Warning as tribunal costs continue to rise

THE State has paid in excess of €320 million in recent years for tribunals, commissions and inquiries, new figures have revealed.

Well over half the amount has been paid in legal fees, with over €120m to tribunal and commission lawyers and over €45m to lawyers appearing for third parties. The figures buttress last week’s prediction by the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Michael Noonan that the ultimate cost of tribunals will be in excess of €1bn.

Mr Noonan said it was unacceptable that tribunals were allowed operate on the basis of an “open chequebook” with no real analysis of their costs.

Now, a series of parliamentary questions submitted by Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness to all Government departments shows that, cumulatively, over €300m has been paid out.

The most costly to the State has been the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and Residential Institutions Redress Board, the expenditure of which reached €174m by the end of last December.

Some €142 million of that amount was paid out in compensation awards, with the balance made up of legal and administrative costs.

According to estimates supplied by the Department of Education to Mr McGuinness, the overall costs will be between €780m and €830m.

With third party legal costs for completed Tribunals running at four times the amount of State legal costs, some politicians believe the eventual cost of Tribunals will be in the region of €1.2bn (most of the Tribunals have made no orders yet in relation to third party costs). When the Residential Institutions scheme and other departmental inquiries are included, the total cost of all inquiries could exceed €2bn.

In July 2004, concerned at the escalating legal costs associated with Tribunals, then Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy announced a revised schedule of fees in an attempt to reduce the costs.

Annual fees are paid of €213,000 for senior counsel; €142,000 for junior counsel and €176,000 for solicitors.

However, the Government, agreed to delay their implementation. The new schedule will not apply to the Moriarty Tribunal until January 11, 2006 and to the Morris Tribunal until September 30, 2006.

However, Mr McGuinness called on the new fees schedule to be introduced immediately.

“There is a potential exposure to the State of 1bn in hidden costs,” he said.

“The Department of Finance has carried out no assessment or projections of future costs. In business that would be unacceptable. In government it is doubly unacceptable,” he said.

A number of tribunals have drawn criticism for the length of their deliberations, the astronomical costs associated with them, or in relation to the inefficacy or absence of interim or final reports. The Lindsay Tribunal into blood donation practices and the Dunne Inquiry into organ retention (which cost €20m up to the time it was directed by Government to complete its work) have both been subject to harsh public criticism.