IN/0977

Hoey lawyer defends £2.5 million trial fees

The publication of figures revealing that more than £2.5m has been paid to the defence team in last year's Omagh bomb trial has led to fresh calls for transparency on legal aid payments. Bimpe Fatogun reports
THE Northern Ireland Legal Services Commission has confirmed that £2.5 million has so far been paid to the defence team in the Omagh bomb trial last year.
South Armagh man Sean Hoey was cleared of 58 charges, including the murders of 29 people including a woman pregnant with twins, following one of Northern Ireland's longest-running cases.
The interim total for his defence includes fees to legal representatives and a range of other expenses, including expert witnesses.
It follows the release of figures which showed that prosecution barristers were paid almost £1.2m in fees during the trial.
The defence's final bill is expected to be even higher.
Solicitor Kevin Winters, who represented Mr Hoey, said his firm -which has also mounted defences in the Robert McCartney murder trial and Northern Bank robbery case - has "no difficulty with the publication of the figures".
"The public is entitled to know that proportionate to the millions of pounds spent prosecuting these cases these sums paid to lawyers and forensic experts represent a significantly smaller amount," he said.
"Every penny of this money was earned in providing all accused in these cases with a first-class defence.
"We feel the results speak for themselves."
The spotlight on this firm, however, has led to increased pressure on NILSC to lift a refusal dating back 31 months to name other multi-million pound Legal Aid recipients.
The commission came into being in April 2003 as an independent body to take over the administration of publicly-funded legal services from the Law Society - the solicitors' professional body.
It has a statutory duty to obtain "best value for money".
In March 2006 The Irish News first asked, under the Freedom of Information Act, for details of legal-aid payments to lawyers from the public purse.
NILSC released details of the top payouts to barristers and solicitors but "temporarily" withheld their identities.
The lawyers had received £59 million during 2005 in legal aid, with just 20 solicitors' firms and 20 barristers sharing almost half the total amount.
NILSC promised to release the missing details by that October.
The information has routinely been made public in the Republic and in Britain.
Following a security assessment, police said there was no reason why the names should not be made public.
However, in September 2006 there were fresh moves to block attempts to name the lawyers.
NILSC claimed it was unable to release the details after the Bar Council, the body representing barristers, demanded individual police security checks for up to 400 of its members before publication.
This was denied by the Bar Council.
A year later updated figures revealed that Northern Ireland lawyers had collected more than £69 million during 2006.
NILSC continued to insist it was prevented from revealing a break-down because barristers and solicitors had said it could threaten their safety.
However, during this period lawyers involved in high-profile cases continued to appear in newspaper articles, with personal details freely available on Bar Council/Bar Library and Law Society websites.
The NILSC has continued to be unable to give any indication of when the figures will be released, beyond "soon", with a number of planned publication dates already missed.
When publishing the total for 2006/07, the commission refused to even break down £3 million in Legal Aid to unnamed individuals.
The overall figures were released with an accompanying statement saying: "The split between counsel and solicitors cannot be obtained from our systems without substantial manual intervention."
Last October, a new head of the body was appointed at a salary of more than £41,000 for eight days work a month.
Jim Daniell (57) earns £436 a day as chairman of NILSC.
Mr Daniell has been under pressure to end the secrecy that shrouds the identities of those drawing millions in taxpayers' cash.