On March 4 last, a commission of investigation into questions over a Nama land deal was published. That took eight years to complete at a cost of €14.4m. It was initiated following allegations in the Dáil of serious corruption in a deal in the North involving Nama, known as Project Eagle. 

The commission ultimately concluded that, contrary to the original allegations, Nama got the best price in the deal, although there were some issues around a “success fee” paid to an individual.

A breakdown of the costs showed that in the last two years of the investigation, from January 2023 to March 2025, the chair of the commission, Susan Gilvarry, received €560,000. One solicitor working for the commission, Susan Connolly, received €443,510, while a barrister, Darren Lehane got €454,729 over the two-year period.

Last Wednesday, the day after the publication of the report into the Grace case, Taoiseach Micheál Martin told Pat Kenny on Newstalk that since 1998 the state has spent half a billion euro on inquiries.

“Some have been impactful and led to change,” he said. “But the enormity of the costs when we still need resources for the children of today, particularly children in very, very disadvantaged backgrounds or with significant dysfunctional backgrounds, it is arguable that some of those resources would be better spent on looking after them and facilities.”

Quite obviously, this state has an inquiry problem, or maybe just an accountability problem. There are trends in how inquiries are initiated and completed. There have been attempts to rein in costs and cut down on time, but with only qualified success. The public has been consulted in one attempt to put the brakes on the runaway train yet the response was, in effect, to just drive on.

The dawn of this era of overblown, wildly expensive inquiries coincided with the opening up of society. In the early 1990s, the old authorities that had defined the State were in retreat. Questions were being asked of power centres like never before and answers were being questioned.

The Beef Tribunal

In such a milieu, the Moses of inquiries, leading lawyers to the promised land, was the Beef Tribunal. It began with serious allegations of malpractice and corruption in the beef industry over a thing called export credit insurance, in which the State underwrote beef exporters, principally, Larry Goodman. 

The new dawn dictated that the only inquiry which could be trusted was a tribunal, conducted in public.

The evidence was often dramatic, particularly as leading politicians of the day like Charlie Haughey, Albert Reynolds and Des O’Malley gave evidence and old enmities surfaced. It lasted three years and contributed to the collapse of two coalition governments. 

The result, again setting a trend, was wishy washy. Huge money had been lost, some crazy and questionable political decisions taken, vested interests looked after, yet nobody was really culpable for anything. 

The chair of the tribunal Liam Hamilton was promoted to the office of chief justice within months of delivering his report. Questions were asked as to whether he would have got the job had he delivered a report that called to account some of those who were still occupying the executive branch of government.

The beef tribunal lasted three years and would ultimately cost around €40m. There was general agreement that this could never be allowed to happen again. 

And then it did two years later, setting off a flurry of tribunals that would stretch and weave through the following 15 years. Charlie Haughey’s money, and allegations surrounding Michael Lowry (yes, the very same man) in government, along with the excavation of decades of dodgy planning decisions, were the subjects for a raft of tribunals.

Commissions of Investigation

By the early 2000s, the cost was exercising a major strain, prompting then Minister for Justice Michael McDowell to introduce a new law, the 2004 Commission of Investigation Act. This was designed to conduct much if not most of the inquiry behind closed doors, in order to cut down on legal fees. 

It would also curtail legal challenges by witnesses. By 2004, there was a constant traffic across the Liffey from Dublin Castle to the High Court from witnesses eager to assert their rights.

The new commission was certainly an improvement in terms of cost and time, but the premise for the big inquiry persisted, and still does today.

It all begins with serious allegations of corruption of one sort or another, usually either in the Dáil or the media. Crucially, the matter at issue has not been investigated by the proper authority at that point, be it within the public sector, the political arena or by the gardaí. 

Therefore trust in the system to deal with it is already reduced. From the opposition perspective there is hay to be made, with calls for all dirty linen to be washed in public. The media, certainly in those days, were all on board as any tribunal was bound to produce plenty of juicy copy.

From the government perspective an inquiry takes the issue off the daily political agenda, parks it, and provides cover to refuse to say anything more about it. Comfort is taken by the government of the day that by the time the inquiry reports, the world will have moved on and the original issue might be long forgotten.

'Close to impossible'

Then there is the process. Notwithstanding moving of hearings behind closed doors, basic legal principles still apply. And in this jurisdiction, the rights of individuals, long asserted in places like the Supreme Court, add greatly to the complexity and length of inquiries. 

As Judge Peter Charleton – who chaired the Disclosures Tribunal in 2018 – noted in a lecture the following year, the rights of witnesses are not dissimilar to the rights of a person on trial for murder.

The rights of “we, the people, paying for the entire process and with an urgent entitlement to know what has gone wrong in our country in order to make our country better … have been forgotten,” he said.

He pointed out that Ireland had responded to the need to balance the rights of those being criticised and the general public by heaping “procedural right on procedural right in such a way as to make the functioning of tribunals close to impossible”.

The judge said: “Surely a better approach is to trust the tribunal to actually do the inquiring, to turn the model from that of a criminal trial to one where counsel for the tribunal does the examination, where the key parties have the right to legal advice, and where the impulse to resort to judicial review and delay is resolved by the simplicity of that procedure.”

His observation explains, to some extent, why it all takes so long and costs so much. A person on trial for murder may be convicted of a heinous crime and spend the rest of their lives locked up. 

The defendant is up against the might of the State and the trial is focused on guilt and innocence. Of course, he or she is entitled to a full panoply of rights.

The witness to an inquiry is assisting in an attempt to establish facts. Usually, the witness is not the focus, and if they are, what is at issue is reputation rather than any specific sanction. In such a milieu, the Irish legal culture dictates that the rights of the individual completely supersede the rights of the public.

Mixed success

The commission model has had mixed success. Some, like that about garda allegations of malpractice, were expedited, inexpensive and productive. Results would suggest the most recent commissions were not. There have been at least 14 such commissions over the last 20 years.

Another feature introduced has been the scoping inquiry, which is effectively an examination of the facts to ascertain whether a full commission is required. The most recent of these was one into events around the killing of cyclist Shane O’Farrell in 2011 by a man who should have been in prison at the time. 

The scoping exercise has recommended that a commission is not required, but Mr O’Farrell’s family and some politicians are still campaigning for one.

Another way?

Is there a better way of doing things? One possibility is to instil a greater culture of accountability in organisations which would alleviate the need for a full blown inquiry. 

For instance, last month the Children’s Ombudsman Niall Muldoon called for a child death review process in bodies like the HSE and Tusla. This is standard practice in other countries and designed to be accountable to bereaved families. Yet here there is no consistent review nor any statutory right for parents to information.

Unless a review process is put in place there is a likelihood that at some point in the future a tragedy will result in a controversy that will fuel suspicions about transparency and lead to calls for a public inquiry. That is what has been happening across Irish life for the last 30 years and will continue without cultural change.

When the Taoiseach laid out the enormous cost and questionable use of resources in his interview on Wednesday, Pat Kenny responded: “But we also need to get to the truth, and we need to find the perpetrators of any wrongdoing and deal with them according to the law.”

“I agree,” Micheál Martin replied. “And we should be able to do that more effectively using the institutions that have been established to do that in the first place.”

The looming question, however, is whether there is the political will and drive to bring about such a sensible solution in the public interest.