Carol Coulter, legal affairs correspondent, of hte TD's libel action.
It may take several years before Ms Beverley Cooper-Flynn faces her bill for the costs, estimated to run to more than €2 million, of her libel action against RTÉ.
When she lost her 28-day case in the High Court she was ordered to pay the costs of the two defendants, RTÉ and retired farmer Mr James Howard, who had said she advised him on a tax evasion scheme.
The Supreme Court now has to decide on the costs of her appeal, which she also lost.
Costs normally follow the result of the action, but the costs of the Supreme Court appeal will be minor when compared to the High Court costs. These involved the cost of three legal teams, her own and those of RTÉ and Mr Howard. Each had an instructing solicitor and a team of senior and junior counsel, and a number of witnesses were called, who had to be paid expenses.
The High Court case was preceded by legal actions concerning the discovery of documents relating to National Irish Bank and its investment schemes. RTÉ was successful in obtaining discovery of these documents, which played an important role in its case.
It is not clear if Ms Cooper-Flynn will have to pay all the costs of the discovery actions, which could add considerably to her bill.
The costs of the libel action alone will have run to well over €1 million. Each of the six barristers in the action will have been paid a brief fee to take the case, prepare it, and argue the first day in court. They will then each have been paid a refresher fee. The going rate is about €3,000 a day for a senior counsel and €2,000 for a junior. So the cost of counsel in the case would have been running at €15,000 a day for 27 days, totalling more than €400,000.
Brief fees vary hugely, depending on the amount of work needed to prepare the case. A minimum figure would be €15,000-€20,000, but it could be much higher, in the region of €50,000. With six counsel in the case, this would have added between €100,000 and €300,000 to the bill.
But the counsel fees usually form less than half of the total legal costs, most of which are accounted for by solicitors' fees. These vary widely depending on the complexity of the case. The solicitors' costs in this case are unlikely to be less than €1 million. To this must be added the cost of witnesses.
Ms Cooper-Flynn may not be billed for it all. It is not unusual for a plaintiff in a libel action to have an understanding with his or her legal team that they will take the case on a "no foal, no fee" basis, or that a relatively small amount will be paid up front, with the remainder depending on the outcome of the case. That would reduce the total bill by more than a third.
The High Court ruled that she would be liable for the costs "when taxed and ascertained". This means that the issue may end up before the High Court Taxing Master, who assesses the costs if the parties do not agree. However, he does so on the basis of the norms in the legal industry. This exercise could take some time, and she is unlikely to be asked to pay immediately.
It remains an expensive exercise for Ms Cooper-Flynn to have attempted to prove that she did not encourage people to evade their tax liabilities by investing in insurance products sold by National Irish Bank, for which she was working at the time.
These products were at the heart of the action, and they involved off-shore investments in the Isle of Man, in financial schemes devised by NIB, which are the subject of a separate High Court examination.
Ms Cooper-Flynn was one of those involved in the sale of these products.