Saville counsel 'paid half Moriarty total'

LAWYERS FOR the 12-year Saville inquiry were paid just half what counsel for the Moriarty tribunal have received to date, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has claimed.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen had told the Dáil that total costs to date for the 13-year Moriarty tribunal were €39.57 million, while expenditure for the month of May was €215,319.

Mr Cowen said the tribunal had not yet addressed third-party costs and “until this is done, we cannot estimate the overall costs of the tribunal with any accuracy”.

However Mr Kenny said the fees paid to legal teams in the Saville inquiry “amounted to just half of what’s been paid to the Moriarty tribunal”.

In 12 years of the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings in which 14 people died, “the queen’s counsel and four junior counsel earned a total of €16.1 million. That’s €13 million less than has been paid to the Moriarty legal team to the end of April last and that bill is still ongoing.”

The Fine Gael leader pointed to remarks by the Minister for Finance in July 2008 that legal counsel for tribunals would no longer be paid once public hearings were completed.

The Moriarty tribunal “finished the run of public hearings” apart from one witness and Government departments were told that “tribunal legal teams including the €2,700 a day senior counsel should be let go”. Mr Kenny asked what legal fees were paid since last July, as the tribunal held sittings on only a handful of occasions.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore asked “if to all intents and purposes” the tribunal had finished public hearings, “why are legal counsel still being paid?”

Mr Cowen said there was “at least one outstanding witness” and it was after that that the “new arrangement” of non-payment “would come into place”. The Taoiseach did not have the figures but said that “a particular work method has been adopted by the chairman of the tribunal in an attempt to keep down costs”.

He said it had been effective especially since it faced four separate legal challenges “all of which were won by the chairman when it came to the hearings”.

Mr Kenny said it was traditional that solicitors from the Chief State Solicitor’s office were used for tribunals and their highest salary was €85,000, but this practice was broken with the Moriarty tribunal and a solicitor had been hired from a private practice at a cost of €1,000 a day, which had reached €1.2 million for the last four years.

Mr Cowen referred him to previous answers he had given on this issue, explaining that the solicitor was hired at the request of the tribunal chairman and while the payment was €1,000 a day, the same rate for solicitors at the Mahon tribunal, the rate was reduced last year to €782 a day.