A lawyer who has earned more than €5.8m from the Moriarty tribunal successfully claimed expenses for two chocolates costing €6.25 each while visiting Belgium in 2002 on official business.

A state solicitor working for the tribunal who tried to claim €10 for a Toblerone bar in 2004 was less fortunate, however. His request was refused.

Jacqueline O’Brien, a senior counsel in the 12-year-old inquiry, billed the state for the two Belgian chocolates from a hotel mini-bar while on tribunal business in 2002. O’Brien, who is the third-highest-paid barrister in tribunal history, ran up a tab of €82.75 in the unidentified hotel, including room service and car hire.

The total paid to O’Brien for the trip was €538.69 for “refund of eating and other misc. expenses”. This included three meals — two dinners and a lunch — for the tribunal team in two of Brussels’ better restaurants, La Maison Du Cygne and Chez Léon. In accordance with civil-service rules covering expense claims, no alcohol consumed on the trip was claimed for.

Details of the €15,191 paid in total expenses to all tribunal staff since 2002 are contained in documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Michael Heneghan, a Scottish solicitor who was on secondment from the chief state solicitor’s office, made a claim for €572.88 in 2004 for a trip to Britain. Heneghan, who no longer works for the tribunal, submitted a bill for £325 (€478) for a stay in a British hotel, including £7 for a Toblerone and a £4 gratuity.

Karl Martin, the tribunal’s office manager, said it was only “in order” to pay for the accommodation, lunch and breakfast and deducted the charge for the Toblerone and tip from Heneghan’s claim.

The solicitor was on a maximum annual salary of €72,266. He was succeeded by Stuart Brady, a private solicitor who charges €1,000 a day and who has earned €1.37m since 2005.

Jerry Healy, a senior counsel for the tribunal, who has earned €8.42m to date, was paid €6,647 in expenses since 2002, including the cost of flights to London and accommodation and meals there.

Judge Michael Moriarty has claimed €716.85. The judge’s entire claim came from two nights spent in the five-star Mayfair hotel in London in April 2007. Healy stayed in the same hotel and his expenses ran to €1,529.17. This included a £355.84 bill for dinner for the entire tribunal team in the Michelin-starred River Cafe.

A document sent to the Department of the Taoiseach from the tribunal last January predicted that it would end in November/December this year and that monthly costs would drop from a peak of €439,000 in April to €60,000 next January.

That timetable now seems optimistic as the tribunal has committed to issuing revised preliminary findings after the current round of public hearings finish.

A letter from Moriarty on December 8 last year said the tribunal’s work had been“significantly disrupted” that week due to the “need to protect the tribunal” and others from “the potential consequences flowing from the unlawful disclosure (by persons as yet unidentified)” of its provisional findings.

Moriarty said: “Dealing with these matters entailed the wholesale diversion of the resources of the tribunal, not to mention the retention of outside lawyers to process the numerous court applications that were contemplated.”

Moriarty has made “adverse findings” against former minister Michael Lowry, his former civil servants, and billionaire Denis O'Brien, having considered the process by which O’Brien’s Esat consortium was awarded a mobile phone licence in 1996.

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