University of Limerick has paid out €3.5m in legal fees since 2015

The university has appointed three in-house legal counsel in recent years with their salaries topping out at a maximum of €299,000 per annum

The highest legal fees paid by UL over the past eight years, meanwhile, were in 2019 and 2020, at €714,000 and €623,000 respectively. File picture: Kieran Clancy

The University of Limerick has paid out just under €3.5m in legal fees since 2015, with a sharp increase in such costs since 2019, despite hiring three in-house lawyers over the past four years.

Figures released to the Irish Examiner under freedom of information show that the university, which has been beset by governance scandals over much of the past decade, spent €1.3m in the four-year period up to 2018. That figure rose to €2.2m in total between 2019 and end 2022, an increase of 63% when the two periods are compared.

The chief beneficiary of those fees is marquee law firm Arthur Cox, which has been paid just under €1.6m by UL since 2015. The same firm was paid €333,662 and €378,113 respectively in 2021 and 2022, up from €67,000 and €182,000 in 2019 and 2020.

A spokesperson for UL said that much of the expense has resulted from a new public sector legal service framework having come into effect in July 2019.

“Arthur Cox are the lead firm on two of the eight lots on the framework,” they said, those lots relating to employment law and multi-disciplinary matters. “Accordingly, from October 2019 the university accessed legal services from the lead firm which is Arthur Cox,” the spokesperson added.

The university has appointed three in-house legal counsel in recent years, the first occasion in its history in which it has done so. The separate appointments were made in October 2019, January 2021, and January 2022, with remuneration for those three staff topping out at a maximum of €299,000 per annum.

Despite this, UL’s external legal fees have remained broadly in line with those incurred from 2015 through 2018.

The UL spokesperson said that two of the three in-house solicitors “deal primarily in research-related contracts to support the growing research function of the university in increasingly regulated areas”, such as health-related research.

“UL legal spend is not out of line with other universities which also have in-house solicitors employed," they said.

The increased fees paid to Arthur Cox are offset by a reduction in pay to 15 other legal firms used by the college since 2015. Just 10 of the total roster of 16 firms were used in 2022.

The highest legal fees paid by UL over the past eight years, meanwhile, were in 2019 and 2020, at €714,000 and €623,000 respectively. Byrne Wallace and Ronan Daly Jermyn, along with Arthur Cox, were the largest contributors to those totals.