The jailed former minister, Ray Burke, has abandoned legal proceedings aimed at getting the planning tribunal to award him more than €10 million in costs.
Lawyers for Burke, who this week began a six-month sentence in Arbour Hill Prison for tax offences, told the High Court late last year they were giving up their legal challenge, The Irish Times understands.
The decision is a financial disaster for Burke, who will now have to foot his own legal bill arising from involvement with the tribunal.
In 2003 he submitted a bill for €10.5 million, the largest known bill received by the tribunal so far. The disgraced former Fianna Fáil politician may yet try to negotiate a lower amount with the two separate legal teams who represented him between 1998 and 2001.
However, if he fails to reach agreement, the lawyers could pursue him in the courts. This has happened in the case of Mr Liam Lawlor, who is the subject of legal proceedings by one of his former solicitors which could force the politician to sell his family home.
Although Burke receives Dáil pensions amounting to almost €90,000 a year, he has had no regular income since he resigned from politics in 1997.
In 2000 he sold Briargate, his house in Swords, for almost €4 million, but he and his wife, Ann, used part of this money to buy a smaller house in Whitehall.
The tribunal has found Briargate was corruptly acquired in the 1970s. Burke also controls a €150,000 "fighting fund" which he claimed was for use in elections. He has said he would take advice before disposing of this money.
In his proceedings against the tribunal, lodged in December 2003, he claimed that his costs application could be determined only by the former chairman, Mr Justice Feargus Flood. This was because Mr Justice Flood was the person who presided over Burke's evidence to the tribunal, not the current chairman, Judge Alan Mahon.
If Mr Justice Flood did not deal with the matter, the High Court should award Burke his costs by default, lawyers for the former minister argued. However, last year the Oireachtas shored up Judge Mahon's legal position by passing retrospective legislation giving him the power to rule on the award of legal costs for the first phases of the tribunal. Last September Judge Mahon refused Burke's application for costs, saying he had set out to deliberately mislead the tribunal.
