The Benchmarking Body paid more than €2 million to external consultants during its review of public-sector pay, new figures reveal.
The body, which has been criticised for not publishing its research, used 14 consultancies during 2001 and 2002 when preparing its recommendations.
Files released under the Freedom of Information Act by the Department of Finance show that they were paid €919,420 in 2001 and €1.29 million last year.
The figures give the first picture of the body's expenditure on research, revealing that one group, Watson Wyatt Partners, was paid more than €630,000 for its work.
The body's 8.9 per cent average pay award to some 230,000 State employees is expected to cost taxpayers €1.1 billion.
With some State employees set to receive increases of up to 25 per cent, ESRI economist Dr John FitzGerald has estimated that the combined effects of the package could prompt a 1.3 per cent fall in gross national product by 2005.
But the body has refused to publish its research and a dissident member of the group, the economist Dr Jim O'Leary, has claimed it offered "no evidence whatever" that there was inequity between public and private sector pay.
Fine Gael's finance spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, yesterday said it was "crazy" that the work under-pinning the process had not been disclosed.
"You can't set in train a process like that and then say all this expensive research is not going to be published," he said. "I think it was a flawed process. It was all done behind closed doors and that's not the way."
The award, which was designed to peg State salaries with the rates paid in the private sector, is the subject of negotiations this week on the national pay agreement.
The director of the Small Firms Association, Mr Pat Delaney, said there was a case for releasing the research "if the rationale of the process was to give transparency and accountability and also some measurement and evaluation to public sector pay".
In addition to the €632,115 paid to Watson Wyatt, departmental records show that two consultancies received more than €300,000. They were: Hay Management Consultants, which received €343,437 in the two years; and TBP International, which received €307,702 in the same period.
Groups paid lesser sums included Tim Hastings & Associates, which received €6,144 in 2001.
Five groups were paid €4,800 each last year. They were: PE Consulting Services; Saville & Holdingsworth (Irl.); IPC Consulting Facilitators; Cap Gemini Ernst & Young; and KPMG Management Consultants.
Chaired by Mr Justice Quirke, the review body had six members representing trade union and business interests.
Mr Justice Quirke said in his foreword that the body was "well served by the expert professional consultants whom it commissioned to design its job evaluation scheme and by those who conducted its research".
The benchmarking pay award is in addition to the 7 per cent agreed earlier this week in the proposed new national pay pact. A quarter of the benchmarking increase is unconditional. But the remainder, to be paid by mid-2005, is dependent on agreement on new Civil Service recruitment procedures and work practice changes.
Mr O'Leary has said the process gave "extraordinary value for money" since it had offered "precious little" justification for the pay awards it recommended.
