Publican hits out at minister over tribunal legal costs
A Donegal publican embroiled in a row over awarding legal costs at the Morris Tribunal tonight hit out at the Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.
Frank McBrearty snr, who has walked out of the tribunal into garda corruption over the payment of legal costs, claimed that Mr McDowell should take action to ease the family’s worries over legal support.
“I have looked for legal representation for all parties at the Morris Tribunal, even gardaí and not just for my own family. What I have looked for is a level playing pitch,” Mr McBrearty snr said.
He said Mr McDowell’s comments on the matter in the Dail were a “big disappointment“.
After Mr McBrearty snr walked away from the tribunal, Mr McDowell told the ministers: “It is regrettable that Mr McBrearty has taken this course.
"In relation to legal representation for him and his family, the position is clear and the ground has, as I say, been traversed on numerous occasions.”
The minister said on Wednesday evening that Mr McBrearty snr had been granted a right to legal representation at the outset of the tribunal in 2002.
Mr McDowell said he understood that the family had not been represented by counsel since the resumption of the ’Barron Investigation’ module in June 2004.
“I am not clear as to why the counsel and solicitors retained by the McBreartys failed to appear when the module resumed. If the legal team were demanding to be paid ‘up front’, I would be very surprised,” he said.
“As I will make clear, the tribunal has been dealing with the costs of each module at the close of each module. Accordingly, no lawyer whose client co-operates with the tribunal will experience any undue delay in payment.”
He said that as the tribunal was dealing with costs on a module bases a legal team could expect prompt payment of reasonable costs.
However, Mr McBrearty snr said that the immediate reason for the family instructing their solicitor and counsel to withdraw from the tribunal was the decision to refuse a second senior counsel.
Mr McBrearty snr said his family were completely innocent people that had been “damaged by a state-sponsored conspiracy“.
Alleged garda intimidation against Mr McBrearty snr and his extended family led to the set-up of the tribunal in 2002.
The tribunal is currently probing the circumstances surrounding the apparent hit-and-run death of Mr Barron in October 1996 in Raphoe.
