THERE'S no doubt about it. The book of the week is the 206 page volume by the Taxing Master, Mr James Flynn, outlining his thinking on why the very large sums claimed by the professionals who clustered around the Goodman faction at the Beef Tribunal cave to be paid.
The biggest individual sums are the barristers fees. Mr Flynn is not in the business of evaluating whether the barristers were worth it. "It is no part of the function of the Taxing Master... to examine the nature or quality of the work done or required of counsel, nor to assess by measurement of fees the value of counsel's work."
No, he's not in charge of that. No one is, as far as I know. He's in charge of checking whether what counsel is paid is in line with what comparable counsel in comparable cases is paid. You will notice the pleasing circularity of this procedure. One of the criteria for the size of the fees is "the experience of fees marked in other cases. Whether the fees marked in the other cases were themselves reasonable is a pointless road of inquiry. Fees march forward together, like a line of children playing "O'Grady Says". Thus, if I charge you £225 for a day of my work today, that's what you will pay. But if a colleague charges £2,250 later today, that's what I will charge you tomorrow.
"The law at the moment is what the market will bear. If you want an expert in any field, you ask the expert what his fees are. You can get some other expert if the fees are outrageous".
That quotation is not from Mr Flynn. Mr Flynn's own way with the English language is highly distinctive. He would not easily, I imagine, have recourse to the blunt and unadorned style of these quotations. A typical line of his, for instance, is about Mr McGuinness, the former Goodman employee. "His allegations," Mr Flynn says, "maculated not only Mr Goodman and Goodman International but also the international reputation of the Irish beef industry and resulted in the metamorphic decision of the Oireachtas to initiate the Tribunal of Inquiry."
Now, I get "maculated", because of Mary Immaculate but I'm floored by "metamorphic". And I think Mr Flynn probably did say "metamorphic" and that it is an adjective, just as "maculated" is a verb. Because he says that kind of thing.
The tribunal, for example, he says revolved around Larry Goodman and the companies he controlled. Robert Schumann once remarked that we "should learn of terrible things if in every work of art we were able to peer into the root of its origin". This striking remark is left hanging, without further comment. It is one of a range of quite unexpected references of which the most likely to go down in history is the one from Lord Hailsham that says without irony that solicitors and barristers, among other professionals, "are the Cinderellas of the modern economic scene, Cinderellas without a Prince Charming to protect them".
Cinderellas, indeed. I'm Cinderella. I was a witness in a High Court case recently. I charged £15 a day to cover taxis, meals and so on. I'm ashamed to admit the smallness of my ambitions compared to Ms Mary Ellen Synon, much less to Mr Dermot Gleeson with his £3,000 a day refresher fees or to Mr Ian Finlay with his £2,000 a day (both on top of their vast brief fees.) They're not Cinderella.
Mr Finlay wasn't even happy with the fee he got if I understand correctly a letter which Mr Flynn quotes. Mr Flynn approves of the keen eye the briefing solicitor kept on fees, as when this solicitor replied to Mr Finlay: "The company does appreciate the unusual position in which junior counsel find themselves in the tribunal," Mr Finlay was a junior then "but naturally does not feel that you are going unremunerated for this."
Mr Gleeson, when asking for a payment of the fee which he had indicated would be "in the range of £100,000-£150,000", remarked that "it should not be necessary for this fee to be mentioned to anyone, apart from yourself". Cinderella was never like this.
The general argument for how much these people get paid is that mastering the material of the tribunal was very hard work and took ages. "Indeed," Mr Flynn says, "there was a steep learning curve involved ..."
Well, sure. But several people in The Irish Times mastered the tribunal perfectly well, as they had to comment on it, and so did other media workers. Not one of them was paid one penny more for the accomplishment. I have often noticed that people who lead sheltered lives, like barristers and university academics, make the heaviest of weather of mastering quite simple material.
They allow themselves to be called, as Mr Flynn called the personnel involved in arguing before the beef tribunal, things like "the cream of the Irish bar". They probably believe they are exceptionally intelligent. But few of them would last a day in a busy newsroom, where reporters are expected to manipulate complex information into readable and lawyer proof stories and articles without being massively financially compensated for the inconvenience.
MR FLYNN lavishes praise on the document which outlines Mr Gleeson's strategic objectives and tactical options for his conduct of the Goodman case at the tribunal. His point is not that Mr Gleeson's plan was a good one but that it took time and effort, and, therefore, Mr Gleeson deserves his enormous fees.
I doubt that this document of Mr Gleeson's was ever meant to be perused by outsiders, such as myself. It is almost playful. Should the Goodman team stage a limited walkout? Should it refuse to accept new evidence? Should it invite the tribunal chairman to visit a meat plant and "let him see a boning hall; he is apparently not keen to see a slaughter house and there is no reason why he should ... The disadvantage is that this sort of attempt at cosiness runs counter to some of the other tactics which we are here considering".
This kind of speculation is Mr Gleeson's sole preoccupation coming up to the tribunal. Except that he has one unavoidable commitment. He is chairman of the review body on remuneration for Ministers, judges and departmental secretaries.
Mr Flynn's report is good on detail, such as Mr Gleeson's strategies and tactics. It also includes a moderately amusing tour d'horizon of self descriptions of the work of the barrister, including a leader from the London Times of 1861.
As for the size of fees. The report comes from the Four Courts' world in which they are normal. Every few years, the country is stunned to be reminded just how wealthy this elite has made itself. This makes no difference to the lawyers. They get wealthier. At least they keep the fish restaurants going and the fine tailors and the second home estate agents and the art galleries and the wine merchants.
In an unjust society someone gets to be rich. Why not them?