Tusla racks up €1m bill for tribunal

Agency slated by Justice Charleton spent €485k on legal costs and €422k for electronic searches

THE Disclosures Tribunal has cost Tusla more than €1m in legal fees for an inquiry that a judge found could have been avoided if the child and family agency had come clean on its mistakes.

Almost half of the agency’s substantial legal bill was paid to the law firm Arthur Cox, which received fees of €485,086.

Tusla paid €422,171 to the cyber security firm BSI Cybersecurity to conduct an electronic trawl for records relevant to the Disclosures Tribunal.

In addition, senior counsel Paul Anthony McDermott and junior counsel Sarah McKechnie were paid €41,758 and €63,498 respectively for representing Tusla’s witnesses at the tribunal, the agency said.

The fees represent the agency’s costs from last year to date. These included “legal advice” to witnesses on their obligations to the tribunal, and compliance with discovering documents.

“Consequently, much of the expenditure outlined above was beyond Tusla’s control, and was generated by tribunal activity,” the statement said.

Tusla was slated by Mr Justice Peter Charleton in his third report on the Disclosures Tribunal.

Mr Justice Charleton has invited parties who were represented at their inquiry to make their case to have their costs covered by the State.

In a letter issued last week, Mr Justice Charleton also invited parties to argue why others should not receive their costs.

The costs of former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, who was found to have smeared Sgt McCabe to four people, are expected to be covered by An Garda Siochana.

Costs for Superintendent David Taylor — who was found to have aided the smear — will be decided by the tribunal. He was suspended from the force last weekend and now intends to retire.

Mr Justice Charleton found that if Tusla had owned up to mistakenly accusing the garda whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe of rape, it was likely there would have been no need for the tribunal.

He found that the false accusation ended up on Sgt McCabe’s file due to a “transcription error” but there was no “conspiracy”.

It was “one of the most unlikely coincidences ever to be accepted by any judicial tribunal. Yet, coincidence it was”, his report said.

Although the error was later notified to Tusla, it was not passed up the line and the false allegation against Sgt McCabe “took on a life of its own”.

Mr Justice Charleton criticised some of the statements made at the tribunal as “laconic to the point of being mysterious”.

He added: “This kind of holding back is bad enough from a private citizen, never mind a public body.”