Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 19 July 2012
610 Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Minister for Justice and Equality if he will provide in a tabular form, a list of all professional fees including but not limited to legal, consultancy, IT related, advisory, advertising, and accountancy; the company name; and the amount invoiced since March 2011 to the end of June 2012. [36656/12]
View answerI wish to inform the Deputy that the only manner in which my Department can extract information from its financial record system relating to "professional fees" is by reference to the automatic deduction of professional withholding tax. This tax covers a range of professional activities not limited to the examples supplied by the Deputy. However, the listing sought by the Deputy would amount to 711,607 individual transactions, covering 2,796 individual suppliers totalling over €93m . The sheer volume and scale of information sought by the Deputy would make the provision of such unsuitable for transmission via the PQ system. I can, however, inform the Deputy that almost 80% of the total payment is accounted for by payments to legal professionals under the system of criminal legal aid. The balance is payments to other suppliers of services.
