LEGAL COSTS alone at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry topped £67 million (€80,954,313), the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) has revealed. A breakdown of the £191.2 million (€228 million) costs over 12 years was released yesterday, showing that £67,603,621 was spent on counsel and solicitors’ services.
In addition to legal costs, the inquiry spent around £250,000 on furniture, £35,000 on counselling for the victims’ families and £62,000 for media monitoring services. Computer costs reached some £34 million.
Four counsel to the inquiry were paid more than £1 million each, the highest figure paid out was nearly £4.5 million. Four other counsel, representing the families were also paid in excess of £1 million.
The NIO has also revealed the sums paid to solicitors. Five companies representing the families were paid in excess of £31 million while one company earned £11.86 million. Another solicitors’ company was paid £13.3 million in legal fees for the taking of witness statements.
The breakdown of the inquiry’s costs are all published on the Northern Ireland Office website.
Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, counsel for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, said no one should be surprised by the scale of the costs given the scale of work that the inquiry set itself.
The setting of fees was also entirely controlled by Lord Saville’s inquiry team, he said.
“The fees were modest by any standards. All the lawyers who were employed would have been earning as much if not more if they had been free to engage themselves elsewhere,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.
Sir Louis, paid £587,000 by the tribunal, did not criticise the inquiry chairman, but he did state that Lord Saville could have fixed the legal fees at a much lower level but “I think he was sensitive [as to] what was a proper fee, and that is what was paid.”
Lord Saville could have met his task in “something like 18 months to two years”. Twelve years was taken to complete the job because of the remit the inquiry set itself out of its interpretation of its terms of reference.
“What he was trying to do was establish which paratrooper fired a shot from his rifle to kill a particular victim,” Sir Louis said. “My view is, after 30 years, to try to find evidence to establish that, was really not very sensible.
“What he could have done – which would have been much more sensible – is to have said collectively that the support company of the paratroopers killed these victims. They have been exonerated and absolutely rightly exonerated. But it was unnecessary to identify each particular soldier killing any particular victim.”
He said there was room for criticism of the inquiry in relation to its costs and the time taken.
“If you want to be critical, the criticism is of the tribunal which gave this wide legal representation and took so long in conducting the inquiry.
“That’s what led to the high costs.”
BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY LEGAL COSTS
Total legal costs: £67,603,621 — to end of May 2010)
Counsel for the Inquiry
Christopher Clarke QC £4,497,963
Jacob Grierson £394,879
Alan Roxburgh £3,525,731
Cathryn McGahey £2,492,473
Bilal Rawat £2,547,142
Solicitors employed for the taking of witness statements
Eversheds – Legal fees
£13,338,368
Senior Counsel representing the families
Lord Gifford £808,040
Arthur Harvey £1,326,426
Michael Lavery £678,191
Barry MacDonald £1,203,202
Terence McDonald £207,420
Michael Mansfield £743,421
Eilish McDermott £1,405,133
Seamus Treacy £1,008,703
Eoin McGonigle £134,556
Kevin Finegan £551,815
Senior Counsel representing Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA)
Sir Louis Blom-Cooper 587,746
Junior Counsel representing the families
John Coyle £812,613
Fiona Doherty £670,877
Ciarán Harvey £673,951
Richard Harvey £676,214
Brian Kennedy £661,153
Philip Magee £83,175
Kieron Mallon £843,568
Brian McCartney £874,398
Karen Quinlivan £610,392
Patricia Smyth £360,911
Michael Topolski £159,915
Mary McHugh £424,524
Junior Counsel For NICRA
Paddy O'Hanlon £442,732
Solicitors representing families
Barr Company £695,461
Brendan Kearney & Co £1,280,392
Desmond Doherty & Co £1,449,836
MacDermott & McGurk £1,529,070
Madden & Finucane £11,863,264
McCann & McCann £696,379
McCartney & Casey £1,483,282
Solicitor representing NICRA
Frances Keenan Solicitors £611,701
Legal representatives for other witnesses (top earners only)
Allen & Overy Solicitors £828,188
P J McGrory Solicitors £804,753
Source: Northern Ireland Office