Cost of liquidating IBRC reaches €3.1m

The liquidators of Irish Bank Resolution Corp have incurred more than €3.1 million in costs complying with orders from the commission of inquiry into the transactions at the failed lender after its nationalisation.

The bank's special liquidators, Kieran Wallace and Eamonn Richardson of KPMG in Dublin, say that up to 80 staff at the accountancy firm have been working on gathering information for the inquiry, while about eight IBRC staff have been assigned to the case full-time.

The information is contained in the third progress update report published by the liquidators since IBRC, formerly Anglo Irish Bank, was put into rapid wind-up in February 2013 as the government sought to restructure the terms of the bank's €35.4 billion bailout during the financial crisis.

The commission of inquiry was established by the government last summer to investigate 38 transactions between the bank’s 2009 nationalisation and its liquidation date which led to the write-off of debts to IBRC totalling €1.8 billion.

The focus has been on the sale of Siteserv, the engineering services company which has since been renamed Actavo, to Denis O'Brien for €45.4 million. As part of the deal, IBRC wrote off €110 million of the company's €150 million of debt.

The liquidators said they received six directions issued by the commission, led by Mr Justice Brian Cregan, in relation to providing certain information and documents.

Some 2.1 million pages of documentation have been printed and 4,967 folders of information have been produced and provided to the commission between June and December last year.

The liquidators said they would attempt to recover whatever costs they are entitled to under the terms of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2014.