Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 25 September 2025
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2024: Houses of the Oireachtas Commission
2:00 am
Mr. Peter Finnegan:
I will give some information before I hand over to Mellissa English. The account for 2024 includes the last tranche of the payment to our own legal team. The total figure is €725,000. All of the in-house solicitors' work was done by the OPLA, so that is why the bill came in at €725,000. Had we gone outside and employed externally, the cost would have been considerably higher. The case is obviously finished now. There were three sets of proceedings in which costs were awarded. The first set of proceedings was the original High Court case, where the court awarded Ms Kerins her full costs. We have a bill from Ms Kerins's legal team for that. It is being worked through by a legal costs accountant on our behalf. The amount is €2.1 million.