Banking inquiry cost €2.2m in first 10 months

The Oireachtas Banking Inquiry has cost just under €2.2 million to date, according to a progress report.

This comprised €996,000 in set up costs between May and November of last year and €1.18 million between November 26th and the end of March.

The biggest expenditure has been on staff and recruitment, which has cost €1.32 million to date. Pay accounted for 76 per cent of the committee’s costs.

Just over €800,000 was spent on secretariat staff, €360,000 on its investigation team, and €61,000 on members’ staff. It also incurred €100,000 in recruitment costs.

The committee has 50 staff in its inquiry “support centre”, including 18 investigators and a six-person legal team.

In the run-up to the commencement of its hearings last last year, the committee spent €56,000 on external legal advice, €290,000 on technology systems, and €220,000 on “accommodation fit-out”.

The report states the IT and accommodation will be “reusable” for future inquiries.

It has also spent €244,000 on external services, comprising €137,000 on its context team and €107,000 on legal advisors.

This is the first progress report from the committee with further updates planned in July and October and a final update by the end of November.

The committee’s work began in May 2014 with scoping and the terms of reference being agreed, along with other set-up work.

The report describes the project as being “on track”.

The context phase, which set out the background to the financial crisis in 2008, involved 34 witnesses appearing at 31 public sessions from December to March. There were also 26 private sessions of the committee.

The nexus phase, which involves bankers, politicians, public servants and auditors giving evidence, will begin next week and run until September.

This phase has involved 40,000 documents being sought, comprising more than 490,000 pages.

These included documents from AIB/EBS, Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank, Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, and Permanent TSB.

Auditors Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC were also requested to hand over documents along with the Central Bank of Ireland, the departments of the Taoiseach and finance, the Oireachtas, the National Asset Management Agency, and the National Treasury Management Agency.

Commenting on the report, committee chairman Ciarán Lynch said: "A key element for the committee is that this inquiry will be conducted in an open and transparent manner.

“This not only relates to how the inquiry can be accessed and viewed by the public, but also in relation to how we conduct our business and monitor the running costs.

“We are committed to ensuring that the costs will be kept to a minimum. In the interests of transparency, the committee will publish the inquiry running costs on a quarterly basis.”