Six part-time coroners earn over €100,000 a year each

Six coroners working part time each earned more than €100,000 in State retainers and fees last year, new figures show.

The figures, released by the Department of Justice in response to a Freedom of Information request, show one of the highest earning part-time coroners was the coroner for Galway West, Dr Ciaran Mac Loughlin, with €138,989 in fees in 2013.

Dr MacLoughlin oversaw the inquest into the death of Savita Halappanavar in Galway, hearing evidence over seven days in April 2013.

The other part-time coroners receiving more than €100,000 last year were the Cork South and Cork West coroner Frank O’Connell with €183,348; Kildare coroner Dr Denis Cusack with €117,400; Wexford coroner Dr Sean Nixon with €104,380; Mayo South coroner John O’Dwyer with €102,035 and Louth coroner Ronan Maguire who received €102,389.

Mr O’Connell received €121,429 for his work as coroner in Cork South and an additional €61,919 for his role as coroner in Cork West.

A further eight coroners received fees of between €75,000 and €100,000. Most part-time coroners are either solicitors or doctors.

Pay cut

The best-paid coroners in the country were the two full-time coroners: Dr

Brian Farrell

in Dublin – who got €266,463 – and Dr

Myra Cullinane

at Cork County Borough, who received €256,352.

A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said Dr Farrell's salary was cut from €290,125 from July 1st, 2013, in accordance with the Haddington Road agreement.

“The Dublin District Coroner is a full-time coroner, including on-call 24/7, weekends and bank holidays. The coroner sits every day – Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays – hearing inquests and [he] deals with all reportable deaths in the Dublin area,” she said.

“The Dublin District Coroner is not paid per item of service. The fees are calculated only on the number of inquests held. The salary was set based on the number of inquests pertaining in 2006, ie 503, as agreed by the Dublin City Coroner.”

Basic retainer

In Dublin city , there were 544 inquests completed in 2013, with 890 court appearances.

The deaths reported totalled 4,838 with 1,798 postmortems ordered.

The remuneration for the part-time coroners is made up of a basic retainer, which is intended to cover on-call duty and office expenses, and a fee per case which is paid in relation to work carried out.

According to the Department of Justice, coroners receive €523 for every death certified after a postmortem and inquest; €188 for every death certified after a postmortem and a €129 for every death reported to them.

Last year, the State’s coroners oversaw 2,087 inquests, down from 2,123 in 2012.

In total, coroners last year dealt with 16,182 cases made up of reports on deaths, post- mortems and inquests. The 2013 total represented a 779 or 20 per cent increase on the 2012 total of 15,403 cases.

Speaking on behalf of the Coroners’ Society of Ireland, Mayo East coroner, Patrick O’Connor, said coroners’ earnings depend on the amount of work.“There have been no increases in the fee per item in recent years and salaries have been reduced. The level of pay . . . reflects the amount of work done and the size of area that a coroner covers. The service is run very efficiently.”

He added that coroners provide a round-the-clock service dealing with families at a very traumatic and sensitive time in their lives.