Tribunals have cost the Exchequer over £44 million to date, the DIRT inquiry subcommittee heard yesterday.
The Tribunal of Inquiry into the Beef Processing Industry has cost £18.5 million; the Flood tribunal more than £8 million; the McCracken tribunal £5 million; the Finlay/Hepatitis C tribunal £3.7 million; the Moriarty tribunal £5 million; and the Lindsay tribunal £4 million.
In contrast, the DIRT inquiry cost £1.1 million up to the production of its first report. A further £1 million was incurred in producing the Comptroller and Auditor General's report prior to the inquiry's public hearings.
Mr Robert J. Curran, second secretary general of the Department of Finance, presented the costings to the Public Accounts subcommittee following a comparative study by his department of tribunals of inquiry and parliamentary inquiries.
He said the study concentrated on the relative costs to the Exchequer only of both approaches to the end of October. Information was not available on private costs incurred, which were also a charge on the economy, he said.
"The Exchequer costs of tribunals vary markably. The information collected shows us that the most costly completed tribunal was the beef inquiry at £18.5 million and the least costly inquiry, the Finlay inquiry into the BTSB, at about £3.7 million," he said.
"The biggest single cost in most tribunals of inquiry is legal cost of parties. The Exchequer costs of same to date in the case of completed tribunals range from £11.76 million in the case of the beef tribunal to just over £2.5 million in the case of the Finlay tribunal," Mr Curran said.
The cost of the State legal team could also be substantial, he added. In the case of the beef tribunal, that cost was £3.6 million and in the Flood tribunal, it had mounted to over £7.5 million.
"The PAC DIRT inquiry did not incur the legal costs of parties and the cost of the tribunal's own legal team was relatively low, at just over £400,000," Mr Curran said.
He added that an attempt had been made to collect some indicators of the scope, complexity and length of each tribunal but this could not be done scientifically, given the varying nature of the matters examined by the tribunals.
The range of variations was wide, with 475 witnesses at the beef tribunal compared to 45 at the McCracken tribunal. The beef tribunal took more than three years, the McCracken tribunal just over six months. The DIRT inquiry took six weeks after the Comptroller and Auditor General's inquiry, which took seven months.
"Each inquiry is unique so that it is virtually impossible to make meaningful comparisons of outcomes," Mr Curran said.
"There are substantial tangible outcomes from some inquiries. The Revenue Commissioners look-back DIRT audits have yielded over £173 million to date, the beef tribunal was a factor leading to the improvement of the systems of control in place in the Department of Agriculture, and the Finlay tribunal led to a major upgrade of procedures, standards and equipment in the BTSB, resulting in new safer products.
"Tribunals can also have intangible outcomes which can be important. Highlighting shortfalls in frameworks of accountability and management efficiencies can lead to useful improvements in these areas," he said.
The Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell SC, told the subcommittee that tribunals were expensive wherever they were run. The Saville inquiry had cost £25 million to date and was only at its opening stages, he said. "So I don't think we should consider there is something freakish about the Irish, that when we conduct a tribunal it costs dramatically different sums," he said.