Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 12 July 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts (Resumed)
Chapter 23: Accounts of the National Treasury Management Agency (Resumed)
National Treasury Management Agency: Financial Statements 2017 (Resumed)

9:00 am

Mr. Ciarán Breen:

No, with respect, those are two different things. We have a legal costs unit which was established in 2013 within the State Claims Agency. It handles tribunals' bills of costs arising from third parties appearing before those tribunals. What we are showing on page 41, and the big figure we are indicating we are saving, are actual bills of costs sent in by third parties that we examined. In order that the Chair will know, we go out to the solicitor firms. The Comptroller and Auditor General might comment on this as well. If it is one of the big firms representing a third party, we go out and we look at all of their boxed files. We examine them and then we begin to negotiate by saying we are not allowing this, that and so on and that we are reducing them. It can be seen that we have had really good reductions in the order of more than 40% over the years. That is on one side and those are actual savings made on the bills of costs.

Then if we look at what is happening on the tables the Chair has just been through, which is the other part of our business-----

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.