Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is fine. It is just to record that. I move on to the State Claims Agency at page 118. I have a couple of question on the agency and people will know that I have form on this from the past. I still cannot get over the cost of legal fees on either side. Can the agency send on to the committee, as it has done previously, the top ten payments in the years 2013 to 2015, inclusive, to firms of solicitors and barristers? I want to see the list. The most important list is one we have not discussed before. Somebody touched on it, but I have an absolutely different take on it. People put in a claim and there was a 42% reduction. The case quoted was one where the Taxing Master made a reduction. That was no credit to the State Claims Agency, it was a credit to the Taxing Master. I acknowledge that the agency was not willing to pay the fee. The public and I want to see the list for the three years 2013 to 2015 of the top ten over-claims by solicitors or barristers having regard to what the agency eventually paid out. I bet the witnesses know the list of firms or people who consistently over-claim. I suspect they have an idea of who they are. I have no idea, but I would like to see if on average there is a 40% reduction. The agency was saying, for example, that the fee was €600,000 where the claim was for €1 million. As such, the saving was 40%. Ultimately, the claims were 60% higher than the final fees. I would like to see the list of those firms that are consistently doing that or to see if there is a pattern. People should know. I suspect that when the agency sees these firms coming from the other side, it is a matter of "here we go again with an over-claim". I would like to see that. Putting that information out there will alert the public and people in general that people who are putting in claims are being watched carefully and publicly because it is all taxpayers' money. That is a list I would like to see.

I am here a couple of years but I am shocked at the State Claims Agency's estimate of final liabilities. It has gone up 80% since 2011. In the accounts at the end of 2011, it was €990 million. At the end of 2012, it was €1.1 billion. At the end of 2013, it was €1.23 billion. At the end of 2014, it was €1.47 billion and today it is €1.79 billion. That is an increase of 80% over four years, which is phenomenal. Why have those claims gone up by 80%? The agency referred to early apologies and so on. All of that sounds right, but none of it seems to match. They are not claims by people. These are the figures the agency has prudently pared back to put into its accounts as a liability. As such, it is the agency's view that what it will have to pay has gone up by that amount.

Given that the State Claim's Agency accounts today say that in 2015 it paid out €165 million and there is an outstanding liability of €1.79 billion, it will be well over ten years at the rate it is going before it clears what is on its table as of 31 December 2015. Many of those will have been several years in the system. We all hear about children of eight, nine, ten and 11 and of things that happened at their birth. How long will some people be in the system? It will take ten years at this rate to clear them. Some of them are probably there ten years already. Will Mr. O'Kelly give us an age analysis of that €1.79 billion? What I mean is that out of that, how much of it relates to claims that were lodged in 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and right back to perhaps the millennium year? How long have the oldest claims been in the system, because that figure is increasing? Much of that will be legal fees. That is why I am highlighting the legal fees issue.

I want to ask one or two other small questions. The witnesses probably do not have those answers; it is information that they can send on to us. I want to come back to page 21 of the accounts which refer to the strategic investment fund. I will not get into the issue but the biggest investment the NTMA made was to Irish Water. That is one Government body moving money to another Government body. That is the biggest flagship investment. The figure is €56 million of direct equity. That is 2.5% of what the agency has invested so far of its €2.2 billion. It is a tiny amount; 2.5% of €2.2 billion investment relates to direct equity. Will Mr. O’Kelly comment on why the NTMA’s equity investment is only 2.5% of total investment?