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Barry Magee to head legal-costs office

The Government has approved the appointment of solicitor Barry Magee as the next Chief Legal Costs Adjudicator.

He will succeed Paul Behan, who retires on 7 October, having been the first person to serve in the role.

Behan, who was appointed as the last Taxing Master in 2017, oversaw the establishment of the new Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator (OLCA) in 2019.

The OLCA was set up with the aim of modernising the system of determining legal costs, and making the process more transparent.

Magee joined the Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator (OLCA) in 2020, having qualified as a solicitor in 2000.

Having initially worked in private practice, he went on to hold positions in both the Chief State Solicitors Office and the Railway Procurement Agency, as well as being the chair of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal/International Protections Appeals Tribunal.

12% rise in applications

The announcement came as the OLCA’s annual report showed that the number of applications seeking adjudication rose by 12% last year to 1,048. The report said that 996 of 1,015 valid applications proceeded to adjudication.

In the 181 cases that the OLCA determined, almost 40% of claimed costs were disallowed – an increase from roughly one-third of costs disallowed in 2022.

Despite the increase in applications, the office said that the average waiting time from application for adjudication to initial hearing date remained at seven weeks, in line with 2022.

Road-traffic cases top list

The monetary value of the valid applications filed last year was €163.6 million – down from the previous year’s €192.4 million, but still well ahead of the €110.3 million recorded in 2021.

Overall, however, the OLCA disposed of more cases, and with a higher value, in 2023 than in 2022. A total of 1,102 cases were completed in 2023 (worth €210.2 million) compared with 806 cases in 2022 (€124.5 million).

During 2023, the category with the highest number of applications was road-traffic accidents (207), but the highest amount claimed (€55.4 million) related to medical-negligence cases.