The secretary general of the Department of the Environment is to be asked today by a Dáil committee to explain why there was a failure to keep track of Mahon tribunal costs, which are running into hundreds of millions of euro.
Niall Callan is to be questioned by members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) about the escalating tribunal costs, and why the department has not set aside a contingency fund to cover the final bill.
It has also emerged that the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche prepared a memo for Cabinet on Mahon costs for Tuesday's meeting, but the matter was deferred as the Minister was in Brussels on business.
Last week, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell claimed the final bill would be in excess of one billion euro.
But this was refuted by the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Alan Mahon, in a letter to members of the Oireachtas in which he said the bill would be in the region of €300 million.
Chairman of the PAC Michael Noonan told The Irish Times that he will be asking why the department has not set aside a contingency fund to cope with the costs.
"If Michael McDowell is right and the final bill is one billion euro there will be a big hole in the Government accounts" he said. "People who are used to estimating these type of costs would surely be able to put a range as to what the costs will be."
He said there was a contingency fund of over one billion euro set aside for claims against the Department of Education in relation to cases of abuse at industrial schools and he could not understand why a similar fund was not set up for the Mahon tribunal costs.
"This is a lot of money, we just cannot ignore the huge liability facing the State and we need to start acting on it now" he said.