Ms Catherine Fahy:

It was not done outside of contract because we had renewed the contract. Our legal costs in 2013 and 2014 were much lower than in 2012.

The year 2012 was an exceptional one because a number of human resources, HR, issues arose. New copyright legislation was being drafted and the National Library of Ireland, NLI, was required to contribute passages and amendments which needed to drafted in legal terminology. There was also a serious challenge to our copyright on the James Joyce collections held in the National Library. Seamus Heaney donated collections to the National Library under section 1003 of the Act and there was a significant amount of legal input required to finalise the agreement. We also got a lot of legal advice from our legal providers on drafting requests for tender, RFTs, and contract templates to ensure compliance with Government procedures. We had a number of freedom of information, FOI, requests on which we also needed advice.