THE FINE Gael parliamentary party chairman has called on the Minister for Health to investigate the Health Service Executive’s legal costs.

Charlie Flanagan said Dr James Reilly should provide “a detailed report on the effectiveness of the HSE’s legal advice procurement process”. Mr Flanagan told the Dáil the “cash-strapped HSE” was continuing to spend €20 million annually on external legal advisers. “This is being done despite the fact that the HSE has its own internal legal office which costs €500,000 per year,” he added. Mr Flanagan said the HSE had created a legal services department in March 2010 to provide professional advice to the organisation. Yet it was still spending a great deal of money on external legal services.

He also called on Minister for Justice Alan Shatter to look at the tendering system in local authorities, many of which were spending hundreds of thousands of euro on external legal services despite having in-house legal departments.

Mr Flanagan, a solicitor, was speaking during the resumed debate on the Legal Services Regulation Bill, which has the establishment of an independent regulation of the legal profession among its provisions. At all times, he said, the House must be convinced it was going to reduce costs in the legislation it processed. “We must ensure a complaint handling situation that is transparent and in which the people have trust,” he added. Mr Flanagan said there was concern the Bill might well contain an excessive degree of ministerial control. “Whatever regulatory authority is constructed, it must be wholly independent,” he added.

“Having regard to the fact that 50 per cent of litigation cases conducted in the Irish courts currently involve the State as a named party, there could well be grounds for a perception that the matter of independence could be compromised,” said Mr Flanagan.

Later a Government backbencher criticised cuts to community employment schemes. Fine Gael TD Michelle Mulherrin who shares Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s Mayo constituency said Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton had been “very badly and sadly advised by the people in Fás”.

On the second night of a two-day Sinn Féin private members’ debate calling for a reversal in cuts to training and materials grants for the schemes, Ms Mulherrin said the community employment projects were in “turmoil”.

The Government won the motion by 89 votes to 47.