Mr. Derek Moran:

There are three pieces to this, namely, defending the case, establishing the escrow and the internal costs of the escrow which are met within that. The fees break down as roughly €4 million for the establishment of the escrow and that detailed legal work has now been completed. The €4.6 million is the cost of the legal team, expert witnesses and so on, in contesting the case itself. I have provided a detailed breakdown of what fees were paid to whom and I think the Deputy is quoting from that.

The Deputy also referred to the solicitors that were engaged. They would have been engaged competitively. We have a framework and there would have been a tender process. We have a set of qualifying solicitors and we would have carried out a sub-tender within that. A company won the contract. We did what we needed to do to ensure the best value we could get there. As I say, in terms of the establishment of the escrow, those costs are finished.

On the defence of the case, we have a team that we think is appropriate to the defence of what is an enormous case. As the committee will have seen in July, the case was annulled with the award of costs by the general court so there is a potential to recover those but I understand that both sides tend to meet their own costs in these sorts of cases. That said, there is an award of costs that is now being appealed. The legal team is employed within the framework of the Chief State Solicitor's office, the Attorney General's office and so on and so forth. The procurement of legal advice tends to be done through those channels rather than through ourselves and they are the experts in fee structures for that work.