A case taken by an employee against the State’s Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) has cost the organisation almost €334,000, correspondence with a Dáil committee shows.
The CEA ensures businesses comply with company law and enforces the legislation in the Republic’s civil and criminal courts.
The agency has spent €333,851 on Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) proceedings taken by an employee last year, says a letter from CEA chairman Ian Drennan to the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts.
Lawyers involved in the case earned a total of €275,226, with €190,236 of this going to solicitors, €55,043 to senior counsel and €30,147 to a barrister, the letter states.
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An internal investigation and appeal cost €58,425, the correspondence shows.
Drennan notes that the agency and staff member have since agreed a settlement.
However, the departments of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, and Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, had yet to approve that deal when Drennan wrote the letter on March 26th.
The case was still before the WRC at that time, although it had been adjourned.
“It follows, therefore, that at this time, the CEA has not incurred any settlement costs,” notes Drennan.
If the Government does not approve the settlement, the hearing will go ahead at the WRC, he adds.
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Drennan states that the CEA had applied to have it heard in private and asks that the Committee of Public Accounts not publish the letter.
The agency did not respond to a request for comment and so did not confirm if the two Government departments had approved the settlement.
Drennan wrote in response to queries raised by TDs when the Committee of Public Accounts discussed the case briefly during a hearing in January, where politicians scrutinised the CEA’s accounts.
Social Democrats TD Aidan Farrelly said €348,000 of approximately €1 million in legal costs over two years stemmed from “non-enforcement” activity.
Drennan told him that the WRC proceedings accounted for a “significant portion” of that total.
The agency hired counsel in 2025 while the fees paid “were certainly front-loaded”, he confirmed.
The chairman stressed that the WRC case was the first of its nature taken against the agency since its foundation in 2021.
“When we are in front of the WRC for the first time in 20-odd years, we take that very seriously,” he said.
The CEA was unable to go into greater detail about the case, Drennan pointed out, noting that this was evidence of how seriously the agency took the issue.
Farrelly also raised the issue of the number of gardaí working for the agency, which requires support from the force for criminal investigations and prosecutions.
A review of the CEA recommended that it have 16 members of An Garda Síochána on its staff, while the TD pointed out that the actual number was seven.
Drennan responded that newspaper reports of tension over this were “overblown”.
He told Farrelly that the CEA was waiting for several members of the force to be deployed to the agency.
