Mr. Liam O'Daly:

I saw a set of figures which had obviously been compiled with high-end commercial work as the main driver for the costs. Those transactional costs for high-end commercial work would not necessarily be in with the bar. It would be high-end commercial solicitors' work. It is difficult to know about those sorts of figures. I hear them mentioned but I do not know how up-to-date they are. From the point of view of State expenditure on legal work, we have strived to bring the cost down. As I mentioned, when we had discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in 2011 in respect of how we go about this, the main point was to ensure that the costs came down. In a sense, procurement methodologies came into the discussion. It is acknowledged that we have brought State fees down. We are not responsible for paying private sector solicitors' firms that Departments use. That is outside our remit. That type of work that those firms do we have nothing to do with in the sense of paying or monitoring or value for money or whatever. Those are matters for the Departments. From the point of view of the State work we handle, we have managed to bring costs down by approximately 48%. That is the way it is now. Of course, when I start talking about a baseline of 2008, it is not exactly satisfactory, but that is the overall result.