THE LAST remaining senior barrister at the planning tribunal earned more than €50,000 in outside State work in a year he was paid almost €500,000 for working part-time at the inquiry.
Senior counsel Patrick Quinn yesterday defended taking on outside work while still working at the inquiry, saying he had an arrangement allowing him to do so. Mr Quinn said the arrangement with tribunal chairman Judge Alan Mahon allowed him to take on outside commissions.
The long-awaited report of the tribunal, set up in 1997 to investigate allegations of corruption in planning in the greater Dublin area, is said to be in a “very advanced stage of preparation”, according to informed sources, but is not expected to be published until the new year. Much interest will centre on the tribunal’s findings about former taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s personal finances.
Figures from the Revenue Commissioners show it paid Mr Quinn €52,854.93 in 2009. In that year, he earned €497,456.73 for his work at the tribunal.
Mr Quinn said that when the public hearings of the tribunal ended in 2008, most of his colleagues went back to the Law Library. However, he made an arrangement with the tribunal that allowed him to take on outside work on a part-time basis.
“I’m happy I didn’t breach any protocol in doing so,” he said.
Mr Quinn was paid €391,224.31 for his tribunal work in 2010 and has earned €298,144 so far this year. He has earned a total of €5,273,521.17 in fees over the decade he has worked at the tribunal. Senior counsel at the tribunal were paid €2,250 a day until they were ultimately cut to €1,760 a day in line with other public sector cuts.
Although the inquiry hasn’t sat in public in three years, it still employs nine legal staff, separate to the three judges who run the inquiry. The nine include Mr Quinn, junior counsel Annette Foley and solicitor Susan Gilvarry.
The Department of the Environment, which foots the bills for the inquiry, confirmed that barristers are free to carry out their own work when not working on the tribunal. Legal team costs for this year are expected to reach €950,000. Total legal costs have reached almost €50 million.
