State should ease ‘financial burden' for people facing heavy legal costs at public inquiries, report finds
National Asset Management Agency
(Nama) commission has said.
The Commission of Investigation into the controversial sale of Project Eagle has called on the Government to change the 'strict' guidelines for covering the legal costs of those who appear before high-profile public inquiries.
It said witnesses who 'diligently' give evidence, submissions and documents can end up in the 'very unfortunate situation' of having to personally pay high legal fees for their participation in the process.
At the moment, the guidelines for legal costs under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004 says witnesses can recoup some but not all of their legal fees. The current guidelines do not cover instruction fees, brief fees and legal fees incurred while making submissions.
READ MORE
In the case of the Nama commission, over two-thirds of the legal bills of the so-called 'bad bank' could not be recovered.
It is understood that Nama's total legal costs reached €7.5 million, but it only received €2.4 million of that back from the commission. Thirty-six witnesses on behalf of Nama, including past and present employees, offered evidence and submissions over the seven years of the inquiry. All of these witnesses made claims for the payments of their costs.
After assessing the claims for costs from Nama with the help of the
State Claims Agency
, the commission said it believed the current guidelines on legal costs would 'benefit significantly from review and updating'.
'Engaging with a Commission of Investigation can be an onerous task for private individuals, many of whom understandably seek legal advice and assistance in relation to their interaction with a Commission,' the commission stated in its final report to Taoiseach
Micheál Martin
.
'Witnesses who diligently provide detailed statements, attend to give evidence, provide documents and make submissions may find themselves in the very unfortunate situation of having to discharge significant fees personally due to the strict confines of the guidelines for payment of legal costs.'
The commission, whose sole member is Susan Gilvarry, said Nama had tried to recoup 'substantial legal costs', but the commission wasn't able to consider or direct the recovery of any costs not set out in the current guidelines. It pointed out that the recovery of costs was less important in the case of Nama, where a state agency's costs are 'sought to be recovered from a Government department'.
But it said that these 'discrete set of circumstances' would not apply in every case, so it recommended that the 'guidelines are revised and clarified to reflect the personal financial burden that witnesses or third parties may be subjected to by virtue of being requested to engage with a Commission of Investigation'.
[
Department of Finance to wind down special bank shareholdings unit
Opens in new window
]
The Department of the Taoiseach did not respond to requests for comment.
The report from the Nama commission said that its final costs, from the point it was established in June 2017 to April 2025, were €10.3 million. This included €4.6 million in legal fees, a salary cost of €1.75 million and administrative costs of €1.4 million.
Since the late 1990s, the State has spent more than €600 million on tribunals of inquiry and commissions of investigation, including the €143 million Mahon/Flood Tribunal, the €85 million Commission to inquire into Child Abuse and the €83 million Moriarty Tribunal.
In April, the billionaire businessman Denis O'Brien was awarded €5.8 million by the State Claims Agency for the legal costs he faced while a witness for the Moriarty Tribunal between 2001 and 2010.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Is Ireland ready for drab Soviet-style apartment blocks?
In the postwar years, a rapidly urbanising Soviet Union embarked on a mass construction programme. It built standardised, mass-produced, cheap, drab blocks of apartments intended as temporary for 20-25 years. Typically floor areas were just 30-40sq m (equivalent to three standard parking spaces). Led by Nikita Khrushchev, they became known as Khrushchyovkas. This week, Minister for Housing James Browne issued new apartment standards that resurrect the old Khrushchyovkas as the urban housing ambition for 21st century Ireland. It is now possible to build entire blocks of 32sq m studio bedsits with no limit on the number of residents sharing a corridor or lift. Up to half of these homes may have no private amenity space. On urban sites, communal outdoor space is negotiable, and on larger schemes developers can design out playgrounds and childcare facilities . Local authorities may no longer require space to be set aside for laundry, clothes-drying, gyms, community or cultural use. There is no transparency about where these standards originated, and they came into force immediately without public consultation, pre-legislative scrutiny or a regulatory impact assessment. Almost a Trumpian executive order, the suddenness and absence of transition arrangements have brought uncertainty into the entire sector, risking delays, additional costs and, inevitably, legal action. It seems in direct defiance of the Department of Finance's recent warning that 'in order to attract private capital, policy certainty is key'. This uncertainty is more likely to shake confidence than to 'get apartment building moving'. A new Planning Bill – as yet unseen – is to be rushed through, putting in doubt current planning applications, local authority development plans, statutory housing needs and demand assessments, and indeed forecasts for infrastructure capacity. READ MORE So are these changes justified? The Minister claims savings of a 'an average of €50k and up to €100k cost reduction per unit', although no calculations are provided. His own department's most recent figures for urban apartment development indicate hard construction costs of almost €180,000 (incl VAT) to build a 37q m one-person studio. On this basis, cutting 5sq m from the structure would only save about €3,500 (incl VAT) (€615/m2 structure costs + VAT = €698x 5 = €3,490 structure costs) given no reduction in other hard costs (kitchen, bathroom, windows, doors, heating, plumbing, electrics, etc). In all likelihood any potential savings would be wiped out within months on redesign, tender inflation of 3 per cent annually and finance. [ Government measures designed to drive apartment building are 'not as effective in practice as envisaged' Opens in new window ] The Minister may believe that squeezing more smaller apartments into the same building will result in lower unit costs. Evidently, a studio for one person will be a cheaper unit than an apartment for two, three or more. Without the evidence, this seems more spin than worked solution. We might hope that developers and investors won't buy into these lower standards. Experience tells us otherwise. When lower standards for build-to-rent apartments and co-living were introduced, it wiped out the 'viability' of urban build-to-sell which was marginally less profitable. Consequently, investment funds now control more than 17,000 new rental apartments, according to figures reported in the Business Post, while only 943 were sold in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway cities in the last six years, CSO figures show. In response to these changes, many investors will pause to assess whether the uncertainty, disruption and legal risks are worth it. So how might they jump? Let's imagine an apartment block of 100 units with permission for 50 two-bedroom apartments, 25 one-bedroom and 25 studios. Using typical rents for new-build apartments in Dublin, our 100-unit scheme could generate a rent roll of €275,000 per month (gross). However, replacing it with 178 small studios could bring in €370,000, a 35 per cent increase. This is certainly enough to send many back to the drawing board. But regardless of how – or when – they jump, this week's announcement gifted all residential landowners a new profit (on paper) from increased development potential. Land is valued on the 'residual' of the end value less the development costs. When the future rent roll increases, it brings up the current land value. This windfall is now booked on the balance sheets and baked in, eventually to be paid in higher rents and mortgages – in one stroke both worsening the 'viability' of larger apartments, and widening the affordability gap. So how many people could be housed in these newly configured buildings? Taking, our example above, a permitted block of 100 apartments can now squeeze in 178 studios. Good news for the 'supply target' with a 78 per cent increase in units on the site. Unfortunately, not so good for anything else. Small units are very inefficient: a block of 178 studios can only legally accommodate 178 people, whereas the same space laid out as 100 apartments can house 275. In fact, the larger 2016 Dublin City Council standards could comfortably fit more than 300 people in a mix of units -all with decent, flexible living conditions, suited to couples, families and sharers. So, in our example, for the same development cost and the same drain on limited construction resources, Browne has incentivised 78 per cent more units, but housed 41 per cent fewer people. Bizarrely, his initiative may give us poorer quality homes while taking longer and costing more. Browne says that he is 'prepared to take risks'. Perhaps consider these risks – of regulatory capture; of rejecting evidence-based plans and democratic processes; of further inflating land values; of incentivising a glut of over-priced substandard homes; of ignoring the 50 per cent of households with children; of believing that squeezing out a washing machine or space for a pram will tip the balance of international financial markets in Ireland's favour. Ireland's speculative housing system has legacies of boom and bust, planning irregularities, ghost estates, low standards, over-inflated values, market crashes and deep recessions that are both recent and painful. We are still paying the price for the last time developers were left to decide what to build, where, and at what quality and cost. In this complex ecosystem even seemingly minor decisions are not without major consequence. If his new Housing Minister doesn't see the risks, Taoiseach Micheál Martin surely should. Orla Hegarty is an assistant professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, UCD
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
Retailers deny price gouging as farmers warn high prices are the new normal
The surge in food prices in recent years is the 'new normal' and a consequence of more sustainable farming practices and tighter regulation rather than a temporary aberration, a leading farming group has warned. And retailers have insisted they are not profiteering at the expense of Irish consumers, their margins modest and grocery inflation in the State low by European standards. Data published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Thursday points to a year-on-year price increase across the food and non-alcoholic drink sector of 4.6 per cent. However, in some areas, including meat and dairy, the price hikes are in double digits. According to the CSO, butter, which sells for around €3.99 a pound for own store brands and €5.49 for Kerrygold, is €1.10 more expensive than this time last year. READ MORE Other dairy basics have also recorded substantial increases, with shoppers paying, on average, 95 cent a kilo more for cheddar cheese and 27 cent more for a litre of milk. [ Price of grocery staples running well ahead of general inflation Opens in new window ] The latest increasers come on top three years of food inflation that have added in excess of €3,000 on to many households' annual bills, with no prospect of relief on the horizon. Denis Drennan of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) told The Irish Times that it was 'more than a little irritating to be listening to politicians expressing amazement and concern about the surge in food prices when those same politicians seemed to have no problem at all voting through measures often directly responsible for heaping up higher costs on the farmers and processors producing that food.' He said regulations that now 'completely set the context for farming cost money, and what's really irritating – certainly from ICMSA's view – is the implication that, somehow, the farmers should have absorbed the increased costs out of our income, out of our margin'. He warned that the increases consumers have faced in recent years are not 'any kind of 'price spike' or aberration' but were 'the new normal'. [ Irish people more concerned about cost of food than counterparts Opens in new window ] 'Getting the food of the mandated standard to the fridge of your local supermarket has a cost – economically and environmentally – and that cost has to be paid,' said Drennan. He pointed to what he described as 'a decade or more when consumers were allowed to believe in the fantasy that all the change and astronomical expense involved in transitioning to low-emissions farming and primary food production was going to happen from the supermarket fridge backwards to the farm without any change or cost to the consumer. That was just a fantasy, and we now see the consternation when consumers realise that, actually, everyone is going to have to pay more for the new system.' Drennan also pointed to data which suggests that previous generations 'spent more than twice what we are [spending] as a percentage of the average family's disposable income. Irish consumers are not overpaying now; the data suggests they've been underpaying for decades and are only now starting to get a glimpse of what their food really costs.' Arnold Dillion of Retail Ireland, the Ibec umbrella group that represents supermarkets, said margins in grocery retail were low, with recent price increases 'overwhelmingly due to cost increases further up the supply chain'. He said that despite an increase in inflationary pressures in some categories, 'Irish food inflation trends remains below the EU average', and he pointed to a 2023 report by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) which stated that the Irish grocery market 'remains highly competitive'. He suggested that the Irish market was 'highly competitive, profit margins are tight, and pricing decisions are primarily shaped by external cost pressures. The financial information in the public domain confirms that Irish grocery retailers are not earning abnormal profits, and are operating in full compliance with legal and regulatory standards.'
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
No one comes out of personal injury award fiasco well
Accusing Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan of a U-turn on personal injury award guidelines might be a stretch given it appears he was careful not to state publicly that he was in favour of the Judicial Council plan to increase awards by 17 per cent. But he certainly did nothing to suggest he opposed it or that he intended to blank the Judicial Council on this issue in dramatic fashion this week. Was the plan simply to sit back and measure the scale of opposition to the proposal for five whole months? If so, what does this tell us about policymaking here? Where's the leadership? The whole fiasco simply serves to highlight the mockery that is the process by which such a sensitive issue is addressed – a classic Irish solution to an Irish problem. READ MORE Following last year's Supreme Court ruling, we have the bizarre stage play of the Judicial Council conducting periodic reviews of the guidelines as provided for under the 2019 legislation it operates under. However, its recommendations are just that. Passed to the Minister for Justice, they have no force until the minister lays them before the Oireachtas alongside a resolution to give them force of law when backed by a vote. That way, a judiciary that can be prickly at any perceived intrusion into their realm can maintain its appearance of independence by reviewing the rules. Politicians, for their part, can largely wash their hands of responsibility by arguing that the proposals are not theirs, but the judiciary's. Meanwhile, costs rise and Ireland's compensation culture continues largely untouched. When the Judicial Council concedes that the outcome of this, its first review of the guidelines, amounted to little more than applying the impact of consumer price inflation over the intervening period, the circus is complete. The process is indefensible. It remains unclear whether the decision was of the Minister's own volition or at the behest of the Cabinet or the Coalition party leaders eager to damp down the flames of fury from industry and consumers alike over the increases that would inevitably follow – not least given his petulant pronouncement after the decision that a failure to present the 17 per cent hike might only see courts ramping up awards anyway and encourage people to bypass the Injuries Resolution Board. The guidelines that have started to put manners on personal injury awards remain in place, complete with provisions to curb precisely those tendencies, as the Minister well knows.
