The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) commission forked out €1,500 of taxpayers’ money for tissues over the past 18 months, documents reveal.
A €2,400 bill at a five-star hotel in Jerusalem and almost €4,000 for an air ticket from Thailand to Dublin for a banking expert were also among the costs incurred.
The inquiry, which has been operating for five years, was originally expected to cost around €4million but the final bill is likely to be at least 10 times that.
Special liquidators to the IBRC have extended their timeframe for the final winding-up of the former Anglo Irish Bank to the end of 2022.
A breakdown of expenditure details more than €2.5million of those costs including hotels, flights and over €1.7million in legal bills.
Separately, staff costs for the inquiry for the period January 2019 to June 2020 were €453,959, according to details released under FOI.
Hotel costs came to over €5,700 including €2,400 in “accommodation for [legal] counsel” at the luxury King David Hotel, classed as one “of the leading hotels in the world”.
It is understood the witness would only be interviewed in Jerusalem and that representatives from the IBRC commission had to travel to meet them.
A further €3,325 was spent on reimbursement of hotel costs for a banking expert to the IBRC, with no further detail provided in the database. A flight for the expert from Phuket in Thailand cost €3,976.
The commission also paid out meal reimbursement costs for the banking expert totalling €450, while €128 was paid for a dinner.
A two-night stay for a witness at the Ballsbridge Hotel cost €477 while another €343 was paid out for overnight accommodation and booking a conference room to meet another witness.
More than €100,000 was run up in bills for the services of a banking expert for the inquiry. This included €92,822 in fees and the remainder in travel and accommodation costs.
A number of lawyers earned six-figure sums for their work on the inquiry, with one senior counsel paid €390,320 and another €202,212.
Refreshments for the tribunal, including tea, coffee and bottled water, came to €894. The inquiry also ran up a stationery bill of €10,000 and paid out €1,509 for tissues.
The commission has said it has no comment to make on the records.
The inquiry was set up to examine the write-off of €119million and sale of the company Siteserv. It was acquired by a company controlled by Denis O’Brien from the bank IBRC, formerly Anglo Irish Bank.
The last Government estimated the final cost of the commission would be €30million. However, opposition figures believe the cost will be much higher at up to €70million.
