THE LIKELY cost of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has been put at between €126 million and €136 million by the Comptroller and Auditor General, John Buckley.
In a report published yesterday, the comptroller said the commission was originally given a two-year timeframe and was expected to cost €1.9 to €2.5 million.
Set up on an administrative basis in 1999 and by legislation in 2000, the commission – when its work was complete – “will have extended for more than 10 years at a likely cost to the State estimated to be in the range of € 126 million to €136 million”, Mr Buckley said.
“Real substantive work” at the commission “did not begin in earnest until after the enactment of the Residential Institutions Redress Act 2002” due to delays in agreeing a legal expenses scheme and a compensation scheme. Progress was “extremely slow” in those early years.
A number of reviews of the commission’s investigation committee caused work to be suspended in September 2003 with public hearings resumed in June 2004.
Additional functions conferred on the commission further added to its length. Included was the remit to investigate the testing of vaccines on children in institutions. This inquiry was abandoned in November 2003, after two years and following action in the courts, meaning, as he put it, “over €1 million in non-effective expenditure” had been incurred.
He said that “in the area of administration, some support work was done using counsel when less expensive staff could have been engaged, for example in the case of inquiry officers. There appears to be scope to achieve economies in any future inquiry by using less expensive paralegal or professional staff for research and investigation work”.
He said: “Up to the date of publication of its report [on May 20th last], only one attempt was made to estimate the inquiry’s cost . . . In general, estimation was hampered by a lack of adequate information systems. Even in 2008 the information base to underpin financial estimation and commitments remained inadequate.”
He recommend that “in future inquiries, attention will need to be given to establishing information systems sufficient to enable the inquiry and the funding department to estimate its commitments on an ongoing basis”.
Describing the work of the commission as “both necessary and valuable”, he pointed out that his report was on its administration and “merely focuses on the timeliness and cost of its investigation”.
Assuming the commission completed its work by the end of 2010, he said the costs were likely to be €30 million for administration, €15.73 million for its legal team, €2.22 million because of litigation, “other State costs” of €2 million and €8.5 million in “outlay by the State in responding to the commission’s inquiries.”
He said the most recent projections suggested the final cost of third-party representation before it “could range from between €52 million and €62 million, with €15.76 million paid in third party costs to the end of 2008”.
Almost 60 per cent of administrative costs went on salaries while, where the commission’s legal team were concerned, “fees paid to counsel, agreed in 1999 . . . were slightly greater than those of other tribunals”. An initial brief fee of €34,918 and €23,279 was paid to senior and junior counsel respectively, with daily refresher fees following the first 40 days of public hearings set at €1,905 and €1,270 respectively. These fees rose to €2,250 and €1,500 respectively in January 2004 when equivalent rates were agreed for the Mahon and Morris tribunals.
Mr Buckley said he had agreed not to disclose the levels of reductions achieved in third-party costs by the commission as this was commercially sensitive and could affect the commission’s negotiation position. In relevant cases “the settlements agreed are considerably lower than the claims submitted”, he said. This, to some extent, underscored “the entirely unsatisfactory process for the establishment of third party costs” at the commission, he said.