Mr Justice Flood has asked for two extra judges to be appointed to assist him in handling the massive workload now faced by the tribunal.
He made his request yesterday under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act, 1921. In a letter sent to the Ceann Comhairle of the Dail accompanying his request, he said he was doing this because of the huge amount of work left for the tribunal.
A Government spokesman said last night that the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, who set up the tribunal, would consult the Attorney General on the matter and report to Cabinet.
The Flood tribunal, established after revelations concerning payments made to former minister Mr Ray Burke, has mushroomed in its scope and is now confronted with a huge volume and variety of issues.
Government sources suggested last night that the Government was likely to agree to Mr Justice Flood's request in principle. However, they also warned that it would prove difficult, as it had done when the tribunal was first established, to find judges willing to take on the job who had not at any stage acted as barristers for any of the many parties that will be called before the tribunal.
Mr Justice Flood, who has been the sole member of the tribunal since November 1997, says in his letter that he intends to send reports to the Oireachtas by September on the payment to Mr Ray Burke by Mr James Gogarty; the Century Radio issue; and the payments by builders Mr Thomas Brennan and Mr Joseph McGowan to Mr Burke.
The judge has asked for an Oireachtas decision approving his request to be made before the Dail goes into recess in three weeks' time. He says he will take no further evidence until the reports currently under way are completed.
The judge, who turns 73 next month, says the huge workload yet to be dealt with has led him to make his request. In addition, he wants a further person to sit with the tribunal to hear evidence "with a view to that person being available to replace any member of the tribunal who, for any reason, is unable to continue to act as a member of the tribunal".
He points out that he has yet to call evidence in public in connection with a significant number of decisions made by Dublin local authorities. There were also other "substantive issues not connected with rezoning decisions which also appear to merit public inquiry".
Some of these inquiries will be "greater in scale and more complex than the inquiries already concluded by the tribunal", he predicts. On the rezoning issue alone, he would have to hear over 200 witnesses and consider a substantial number of documents.