OFFICIAL investigations and reports on alleged garda brutality and wrongdoing have cost the taxpayer €52m over the past six years.

Figures obtained by the Sunday Tribune show that the taxpayer has had to foot the bill for major inquiries into corruption and wrongdoing in Donegal, Dublin and Tipperary.

An inquiry into the detention and subsequent death of the young teenager Brian Rossiter in 2002 cost the state €1.75m, the Department of Justice said. The investigation conducted by senior counsel Hugh Hartnett ran for two years and found that the detention of Rossiter at Clonmel garda station was "unlawful".

The Department of Justice said that a total of €48.9m had already been spent at the Morris tribunal, on investigating widespread corruption in the Donegal division. "Various reports [have been] published: July 2004, May 2005, May 2006 and April 2008," it said.

An examination of papers carried out by senior counsel Shane Murphy into the allegations of wrongdoing in Donegal also cost €104,000.

Another investigation, which arose from the Donegal corruption scandal, took place after suggestions that gardaí had advance notice of the Omagh bombing in 1998. The Nally Group report cost €267,147 and found there was "no foundation for the allegations made" by Det Sgt John White.

Another investigation also had to be undertaken into the "false inculpatory statements" made by heroin addict Dean Lyons, who gave statements to gardaí admitting he had carried out a brutal double killing in Dublin's Grangegorman. However, a convicted killer – Mark Nash – later came forward admitting he had carried out the vicious crime. An initial report by senior counsel Shane Murphy in relation to the bogus confessions cost the state €74,000, the Department of Justice said. The report was followed by a Commission of Investigation conducted by George
Bermingham, which ended in a bill for €984,000.

The Department of Justice has spent a total of €5.21m since 2002 on a series of reports and internal inquiries, figures have shown.

Most recently, it paid out €14,300 for a report on the proposed development of a super-prison at Thornton Hall in north Co Dublin. That project is now thought to be under serious threat, even though overcrowding in the Irish prison system has reached its worst levels in well over a decade.

In April 2008, the department approved a €45,000 report into "building integrated neighbourhoods".

Its aim was to come up with a plan to avoid "ghettoisation" of non-nationals and asylum seekers who were arriving in Ireland.