November 15, 2010 - Brief Counsel cited in Sunday Business Post
15/11/2010
Kieron Wood, writing in today's Sunday Business Post "Business of Law" page, cites Brief Counsel's Hugh Kennedy when discussing the Irish State's spend of €500m on legal services in recent years. The full text of the article appears below.
Legal bill of €500 million for government criticised
21 November 2010 By Kieron WoodThe government has spent up to half a billion euro on legal fees in recent years, according to the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.
But the chairman of the Office of Public Works (OPW) told the committee that efforts were being made to ensure more competition between lawyers.
At a meeting to discuss the 2009 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General on public procurement, Fine Gael deputy Bernard Allen said that, despite the massive expenditure, there was no mention in the report of procurement or the responsibilities of the OPW in that area.
OPW chairman Clare McGrath said legal fees were ‘‘not an area that would be disregarded, but it is not immediately where our focus is now''.
She said that, under European Union procurement law, legal services were not subject to the normal rules of EU directives, partly because each jurisdiction had its own legal services.
McGrath said that procurement of services such as legal counsel cost the government about €115 million last year.
‘‘A large part of that would be around criminal legal aid, civil legal aid, the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP and the Chief State Solicitor's office," she said.
McGrath said that state legal fees had been cut by 8 per cent last year, and that there would be ‘‘a further initiative in engagement with the large procurers, such as the Chief State Solicitor's office, to see what can be done about engendering a higher degree of competition within the procurements''.
Deirdre Hanlon, principal officer in the national public procurement policy unit, told Allen that she would report back to the committee with details of the amount being spent on legal fees by each department and state agency.
‘‘We are aware that the Health Service Executive is going to the market for the procurement of legal services and we would expect competition to be engendered through that," she said. ‘‘The department is not in a position to police or oversee each individual contract."
Fine Gael TD Michael D'Arcy said there appeared to have been ‘‘a comfortable or cosy arrangement'' between the HSE and its legal advisers for the past decade and asked whether any analysis of procurement had been carried out.
‘‘That analysis has not been done yet," McGrath replied. ‘‘What we are doing is setting central guidelines." Allen pointed out that some legal firms had received ‘‘massive amounts''.
He said that Arthur Cox Solicitors had been paid about €10 million in the past two years for contracts for advising state agencies on the banking crisis.
‘‘That is a specific contract about which I am aware," said Hanlon. ‘‘That particular procurement is a rather exceptional one."
Allen said that, in light of the challenges in the budget, he was surprised there had been no ‘‘line-by-line scrutiny of procurement practices''.
Legal costs expert Hugh Kennedy, a barrister and director of Brief Counsel, told The Sunday Business Post that the ‘‘continuing lack of adherence to public procurement principles by the state for legal services is a major issue that needs addressing''.
Kennedy said the lack of proper procurement for legal services ‘‘extends way beyond the tribunals, and is endemic among state agencies and local authorities. It is a huge and unnecessary drain on the public purse''.
© Thomas Crosbie Media 2010.