John Coughlan: huge earnings

THE fees paid to the legal team of the Saville inquiry, which have caused uproar in Britain, are little more than half the total amount paid to the lawyers working for the Moriarty tribunal over roughly the same period.

The findings of the Bloody Sunday inquiry have been hugely welcomed in Ireland for finally vindicating the innocence of the unarmed civilians shot dead in Derry.

But the cost of the inquiry has caused huge controversy in Britain and last weekend UK justice minister Ken Clarke said Saville was a "disaster in terms of time and expense".

The inquiry sat for 12 years and cost over stg£190m (€227m). There has been particular focus in the media on the legal fees, with one newspaper describing Saville "as the judicial equivalent of work practices at the Longbridge car plant in the heyday of Red Robbo" .

However, the €16.1m in total earned by the one Queen's counsel (the British equivalent of senior counsel) and four junior counsel working for Saville is still €13m less than the cumulative fees earned by the Moriarty tribunal legal team to the end of April last. The Moriarty team does have three more barristers in its team, with three senior counsel and five junior counsel.

The two top earners at Moriarty – John Coughlan and Jerry Healy – have both been paid in the region of €9m since the tribunal was set up in 1997, compared to €5.4m paid to Saville's Queen's counsel Christopher Clarke. The third senior counsel at Moriarty, Jacqueline O'Brien, has been paid €6.4m.

With still no date announced for Michael Andersen – the telecoms consultant who advised the government on the awarding of the second mobile phone licence in the mid-1990s – to give evidence, the Moriarty tribunal is now expected to run into next year.