Committees of inquiry to replace costly tribunals would have far fewer lawyers, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, said yesterday.
"I do accept that one of the greatest expenses comes from the barristers and solicitors and the way in which they have become involved in the tribunal process," Mr McDowell said.
For some time he had been working with the current Attorney General, Mr Rory Brady SC, on proposals for non-tribunal inquiries which would operate at a fraction of the cost of tribunals.
Mr McDowell, speaking on RTÉ radio, said tribunals were required to be heard in public and that meant people had the right to cross-examine. People were making submissions and going to the High Court to seek judicial reviews. It became a very complicated public legal process.
There had been inquiries in the UK which had been a great deal shorter, he said, such as the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq issue.
Asked about the possibility of fewer lawyers for inquiries here, as the Scott inquiry had essentially just one working for it, Mr McDowell replied: "Yes, and I think whereas we may not get to exactly one lawyer, we'll get down to a handful of lawyers at the very, very most".
If an inquiry were conducted in private, people would not have to engage to the same degree in contradicting or testing testimony.
"So I think that we can look forward to a period when a lot of inquiries will be conducted with very much fewer lawyers."
There had been precedents for that, such as the inquiry into the Kilkenny incest case, he added.
"In Ireland what we are now doing is putting in place a system whereby private inquiries will have the same kind of compellability powers as, say, authorised inspectors or offices under the Companies Acts have, but they will not conduct their hearings in public," Mr McDowell said.
He said a judge would not necessarily be required to preside over a committee of inquiry. One of the problems with involving the judiciary was taking away valuable resources from the public domain of the administration of justice. But there had to be somebody in charge of an inquiry who was trained to be objective and competent to deal with some of the legal issues which inevitably arose, he said.
"I wouldn't object to somebody at their own expense bringing along a solicitor to make sure their rights weren't infringed," Mr McDowell added.
"But this idea of adversarial participative legal involvement, such as we see in the public domain in tribunals, I think is not necessary for the conduct of most proper inquiries," he added.