The Minister for Finance signed off on a plan to increase daily payments for a financial services tribunal to rates of between €660 and €1,011 per day.
In a departmental submission, Paschal Donohoe was told that "per diems" for the Irish Financial Services Appeals Tribunal (IFSAT) had been slashed during the recession.
It said the existing rates were no longer a guarantee that members of the tribunal would be sufficiently qualified, especially when other pre-Crash cuts had been reversed.
Minister Donohoe said he agreed to the plan pending confirmation by his colleague Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers.
The daily rate of pay for the chairman would be increased from the current rate of €584 per day to €1,011.
For the deputy chair, the rate would rise from €450 to €910 and for lay members, it would jump from €416 to €660.
The department submission - prepared by senior officials in March - explained how IFSAT was unusual in that rates of pay had originally been set by the President.
The tribunal allows parties to take appeals against certain types of decisions made by the Central Bank around supervision, sanctions, enforcement, and other regulatory matters.
The submission said the original per diem rates were fixed in 2007 but that in 2009, an 8% reduction was applied due to the financial crisis.
In 2012, a "further voluntary reduction" saw the chair's fees cut by 37%, the deputy chair by 46% and lay members by 31%.
The submission said costs of the tribunal were paid by the Central Bank and were relatively low.
However, they did come in higher than normal at an estimated cost of €401,000 last year due to a particularly complex case.
Officials explained how the reductions in daily rates had been voluntarily agreed with "no increases despite changes in public service pay."
The submission said: "It is difficult to justify maintaining voluntary reductions against a background of overall restoration in public sector pay."
It said the higher level of pay was needed to acknowledge the increased workload and complexity of tribunal cases.
Officials argued cases required "significant time and expertise" and that the people who served needed to be "highly qualified."
"As IFSAT is an important element of the appeals process, it is essential that there is the appropriate level of skills and competencies and that the fees reflect that requirement," the submission said.
It concluded that there was a special case for restoring the fees as the IFSAT was quasi-judicial and not comparable to other bodies.
The submission said the department needed a tribunal that was "effective, efficient, and [with] the correct skills to carry out its duties."
"It is also important as a way of ensuring there is access to review of the Central Bank’s decisions given that the alternative would be reliance on access to the High Court, at a significantly higher cost to the appellant," it added.
Asked about the records, the Department of Finance said they had no further comment to make.
Reporting by Ken Foxe
