Departmental Legal Costs

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Questions (361)

Maurice Quinlivan

Question:

361. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan asked the Minister for Education and Skills the amount paid by the State in fees to legal professionals for the purposes of defending the O’Keeffe case and other cases of day school sex abuse litigation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54806/17]

View answer

Written answers

Minister for Education and Skills

The State Claims Agency are mandated to manage these cases on behalf of the State. The legal fees paid in respect of these cases since the beginning of 2011 to end of 2017 are set out as follows.

Table 1: Claims created 2011 – 2017

Table 1 outlines day school claims created under the Minister for Education and Skills between 2011 and 2017 inclusive.

2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	Grand Total
29	2	2	101	33	25	8	200

Table 2: Payments made 2011 – 2017

Table 2 outlines the legal fee payments made under the Minister for Education and the number of claims relating to these payments from 2011 – 2017 inclusive.

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016**	2017**	Grand Total***
Payment – Agency Legal Costs****	€5,173	€4,532	€1,330	€91,052	€96,444	€304,391	€461,410	€964,331
Payment – Plaintiff Legal costs****	€11,284	-	-	€104,550	€40,944	€11,400	€110,700	€278,878
Payments Total****	€16,456	€4,532	€1,330	€195,602	€137,388	€315,791	€572,110	€1,243,309
No of related claims	12	5	2	75	26	75	88	157*

* The total number of unique claims transacted over the reporting period will not equate to the sum of the claims in each year as there may be payments made for a single claim across multiple years

**The higher figures in 2016 and 2017 in respect of the agency legal costs reflect payments to the agency’s solicitors and counsel in respect of advices concerning the implications of the ECtHR judgement in Louise O’Keefe v Ireland

***The figures for each year are rounded to the nearest euro. However, the Grand Total in each case is the actual total of all the annual rounded figures.

****As well as the payments total of €1,243,309, a further amount of €15,473.40 was paid in 2015 in respect of cost of counsel employed to carry out a review of closed Day school claims.