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THE GOVERNMENT SPENT more than €38million on legal fees last year, according to provisional figures provided by the Taoiseach’s office.
The legal bill of €38,233,000 covers fees for barristers and solicitors as well as expert witnesses and stenographers. However, €23,768,000 of the total went to barristers.
Meanwhile, Enda Kenny has acknowledged that a competitive tendering system to reduce costs – which the Government committed to examining after its election – will not be introduced for the time being.
The total figure represents a 12 per cent decrease on the year before, when the total bill was €43.5million. Of that, €27.1million was spent on barristers.
Currently, barristers for the State are chosen from panels. However, in its Programme for Government the Fine Gael/Labour coalition committed to analysing the benefits of a tendering process for barristers and solicitors.
Answering a Dáil question from Fine Gael’s Alan Farrell, the Taoiseach said that the reduction in spending meant proposals for a tendering process have been abandoned for the moment.
He said the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform “has accepted that, for the present, it would be preferable not to introduce competitive tendering in the normal sense as the Offices [of the State's various legal authorities] have been successful in reducing legal fees over recent years.”
The figures relate to legal expenses incurred by the Attorney General’s office, the Chief State Solicitor and the DPP.
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I think it’s mad that the English are so into Mrs Browne’s Boys. Is it as popular in Ireland or is it a Dublin thing mainly? Genuine question…
It’s the type of humour. If you look back at English comedies 60′s to 80′s they were largely over the top lampoon type charachter driven like mrs brown.
If the bbc or whoever tried to make something similar today theyd be feicked from a height for making such a throwback, gap in the market fully exploited by what’s his name, I take my hat off.
But to answer your question it’s a generational thing I’d wager.
Yeah It seems that it’s very popular in the UK! I was in Scotland for the summer and had numerous people ask me If I had ever seen Mrs Brown’s Boys. Its filmed in Glasgow too.
The viewers should have been thanking the BBC for any interruption to Mrs Brown’s boys
It’s sh*te everywhere you go
Even after passing away Mandela was briefly able to make the world a better place. Wonder did any of Mrs Browns UK viewers actually know who Mandela was before the interruption.
have your say