The Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady, has written to the chairmen of existing tribunals seeking to reduce the fees to their counsel, The Irish Times has learned.
Discussions are expected to continue over the summer seeking to get agreement on a date for the phasing in of the new, reduced fees.
The Government announced last month that lawyers' fees in tribunals are to be pegged at the annual salary paid to a High Court judge for senior counsel, with a daily rate of €900 for those working on an episodic basis. This compares with a previous daily rate of between €2,000 and €2,500, along with a substantial brief fee. Junior counsel are paid two-thirds of the senior rate.
It is understood that both the Attorney General and the counsel are anxious to avoid an airing of the issue in the courts. Barristers do not, in law, have a contractual relationship with their clients and cannot sue for their fees.
Nor can they sue for breach of contract if their fees are reduced. It is not expected, therefore, that there will be a legal challenge to the Government moves to reduce the fees. Nonetheless, the move is expected to lead to changes in the personnel involved in the tribunals.
The change will affect not only the counsel retained by the tribunals but also those working for witnesses called to appear before them. While the reduction in fees will not be retrospective, it will affect the total fees that can be sought at the end of a particular tribunal by those demanding their fees on the basis that they co-operated with the work of the tribunals.
However, the main aim of the new fees regime is to reduce the cost of future tribunals, and to ensure that if certain tribunals go on for a long time, with several modules, there can be a relatively smooth change in fee structure and personnel between one module and another.
The planned commission to investigate the Garda handling of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and the missing documentation relating to them, announced last week, will be set up on the basis of the new fee structure, a spokeswoman for the Taoiseach confirmed