Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the Deputy's first question regarding the cost of protected disclosures, I do not have that specific figure in front of me. I can ask the office whether it is even possible to obtain that figure and the specifics around it. If it is, we can send it on to the committee but I will have to engage with the officials to find out if there is a breakdown of that. Different agencies of the State are responsible for protected disclosures and, therefore, they might not all be necessarily channelled through the Chief State Solicitor’s office.

On the Deputy's point on securing value for money with respect to fees and doing that work in-house, there is significant legal expertise in the office and those staff do a great deal of case management and progress many cases. That is distinct from how it works around counsel. To give some information on that, the majority of cases the office handles are taken against the State and it is necessary for the State to defend itself against any of these cases. That can require specialist advocacy services offered by specific counsel. In some instances, they are specific counsel who are very much specialists in their area in Ireland and if Ireland is representing itself in a European context, it is important we have such specialist expertise. It can also vary. There is uncertainty with respect to demand, therefore, it can be difficult to predict the work and cases can often take years to conclude. Another aspect is the increasingly challenging and complex nature of case management and the nature of discovery, and the cost involved in that.

The Deputy also asked about fees. In terms of fee note processing, there is an evaluation process that involves a minimum of two and a maximum of seven legal officers, including legal officers in the Office of the Attorney General. They are processed through use of guidelines and oversight. There is a professional fees control group within the Chief State Solicitor's office that ensures value for money and fairness in the service provided, ensuring there is consistency across all work and managing the spend in the context of the budget. There is a marked-down rate, which is approximately 33%. Obviously, that is an estimate but there is a marked-down rate when it comes to counsel. If the Deputy were to compare what we are allocating under the subhead covering fees to counsel this year versus, say, 2019, it is less. It is subject to fluctuation. It can depend on the nature of the case that is taken. There is a Supplementary Estimate and this is one of the subheads involved. If the Deputy notes the trend over a period of years, a greater amount was allocated under that in 2019.