Mr. Michael O'Keeffe:

There was significant legal work in 2012. The highlight pieces would have been the legal work on the section 53 investigation on 'Mission to Prey' which was in the first half of the year. There was also significant legal work on the other investigative piece, the "Frontline" programme on the presidential election. There would have been legal support for that. We also developed the new contract for sound and vision which is referred to in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. In 2012 we were about to enter the re-licensing of the existing local commercial network. We introduced a new contract for that. There have been a couple of new codes which require legal oversight. The committee probably saw in the past week that the register of interest was the subject of intense legal review prior to the introduction of the code of fairness that came in last week. The children's code on diet and nutrition raised several legal issues.

The nature of what we do potentially invites some of our stakeholders to challenge some of the issues that we intend to deal with. We consider it important that there is a strong legal basis for our actions. I always touch wood when I say something like this but we have not been subject to a judicial review since 2005. They can be very costly, time and resource-consuming exercises. The fact that we have a good legal basis for our work and the policies we introduce assists us greatly in that respect. The nature of what we do will require significant legal outlays at different stages and in 2012 the outlay was due to the major pieces of work about which I spoke.