Taxpayers paid €10.3 million for an investigation into a controversial property sale by the National Asset Management Agency (Nama), including €2.4 million paid to the State organisation itself.
The Government recently published a report by solicitor Susan Gilvarry into Project Eagle, Nama’s €1.6 billion sale of Northern Ireland properties to US firm Cerberus in 2014.
Her commission of investigation cost €10.34 million, figures that Ms Gilvarry has given the Oireachtas show. That includes €4.64 million in legal fees.
The commission paid €2.44 million to Nama to cover legal advice given to witnesses for the agency.
Nama provided 36 witnesses. Its total legal bill approached €7.5 million, but the body paid €5 million of this itself.
Guidelines for such commissions of investigation only allow witnesses to claim legal costs where evidence calls their conduct or good name into question, or where it jeopardises personal or property rights.
Ms Gilvarry and others working on the inquiry were paid €1.76 million, while administration costs fell just short of €1.5 million.
Her investigation found no evidence that another bidder was willing to pay more for the Project Eagle assets than the price that Nama secured from Cerberus.
However, she noted that the agency failed to properly clarify questions over a potential £5 million (€5.9 million) success fee promised to Frank Cushnahan, a former member of its Northern Ireland advisory committee, if another bidder, US business Pimco, had succeeded in buying the assets.
After he resigned from the Nama committee, Mr Cushnahan worked as an adviser to Pimco, along with Belfast solicitors Tughan’s and US lawyers, Brown Rudnick.
Project Eagle consisted of €6 billion in loans to leading developers in Northern Ireland secured on properties there, in the Republic and Britain.
Nama acquired them in 2010 when it took over property loans from Irish banks as part of the State’s bid to save the Republic’s financial system from collapse after a property speculation bubble burst.
Ownership of the loans conferred the right to seek their repayment or take control of the properties against which they were secured.
Nama sold them to Cerberus in April 2014. Controversy over the deal erupted in 2015, when it emerged that Tughan’s managing partner, Ian Coulter, transferred €7 million in fees from the transaction to an Isle of Man bank account without his firm’s knowledge.
Mr Coulter transferred the cash back to the firm and resigned, leading to claims that political and business figures in the North were to benefit from the cash.
The row led to a criminal investigation in the North, while separately the Republic’s Comptroller and Auditor General found that Nama could have secured €220 million more for the loans.
Government established Ms Gilvarry’s commission, with her as its sole member, following the comptroller’s findings.
