THE BARRISTERS working for the Moriarty tribunal continued to make substantial amounts in fees in the period prior to the publication of its report, new figures show.
Tribunal barrister Jacqueline O’Brien SC made €54,888 in fees in the period January 24th to February 28th, the figures show.
Her colleague, Jerry Healy SC, made €33,117 during the same period. Mr Healy was the lead counsel to the tribunal and on January 10th the tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty, proposed to the Department of An Taoiseach that the services of Mr Healy be substantially reduced.
He made the commitment in response to a letter from the secretary general to the Department of An Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy, where he passed on a query from the Department of Finance about the retention, by the tribunal, of its existing legal team in a context where the tribunal had finished hearing evidence.
The correspondence, and the latest figures for fees for the tribunal’s legal team, were released to agents of businessman Denis O’Brien on foot of a Freedom of Information request. They were then shown to The Irish Times.
In his report, published on March 25th, Mr Justice Moriarty found that Mr O’Brien had conferred financial benefits on politician Michael Lowry and that Mr Lowry had interfered with the second mobile phone licence competition in 1995, to the benefit of Mr O’Brien’s Esat Digifone.
The figures show that in the period January 24th to February 28th, barrister Patrick Dillon-Malone earned €43,197. Mr Dillon-Malone joined the tribunal’s legal team after former lead counsel John Coughlan SC took ill.
Barrister Marie Moriarty (no relation to the judge) earned €35,388 while her colleague Stephen McCullough earned €28,102. Solicitor Stuart Brady earned €21,763.
Mr Healy’s earnings during his time with the tribunal, which was established in 1997, were in excess of €9.5 million by the end of February, while those of Ms O’Brien, who became a senior counsel during the lifetime of the tribunal, were €6.8 million.
The correspondence shows that Mr Justice Moriarty, in his reply to the Department of An Taoiseach in January, said he wanted to state clearly that he alone was making the conclusions that were contained in his report.
His legal team, he said, were involved in numerous tasks. These included proofreading drafts of the report, compiling documentary appendices, assisting in the preparation of summaries, preparing draft replies to correspondence to the tribunal, and “examining and advising the sole member [the judge] in relation to any potential infirmities in potential findings which might be susceptible to judicial review and other litigation”.
He said he was also receiving some assistance in reading the several hundred pages of submissions the tribunal had received. He said it was his view that any “peremptory disbandment of virtually all legal assistance at this junction could occasion a high degree of hazard”.