The Newfoundland and Labrador government announced late Friday afternoon it will give the head of the Cameron Inquiry the extension and the resources she has requested, even after the premier and province's justice minister criticized the inquiry for the amount of money being spent on legal fees.

Justice Margaret Cameron will now have until February of 2009 to deliver her final report into what went wrong with hundreds of hormone receptor tests. Justice department spokesperson Ken Morrissey said Cameron will also get the resources she requested, and the budget she needs to cover all legal fees.

On Tuesday, Premier Danny Williams said during a local cable television program he was concerned about the "considerable" cost of the legal fees being paid to inquiry lawyers Bern Coffey and Sandra Chaytor.

Provincial Justice Minister Jerome Kennedy continued the criticism on Wednesday, saying one law firm charged $93,000 in one month, and another charged $67,000 in the same month for a total of $160,000. Kennedy said the legal bills for the inquiry so far total $1.4 million, and he said he had written to Cameron outlining his concerns.

CBC News requested the latest figures Friday from the province's justice department, and they show that Coffey's firm billed taxpayers for $467,000 to the end of March of this year. Chaytor's firm has billed $610,000, up to the end of May, meaning the inquiry's lead lawyers have billed for more than $1 million.

While the numbers are large, broken down they show a different picture. The inquiry pays Coffey and Chaytor $200 an hour. Coffey has been billing the inquiry for 63 hours a week, Chaytor for 77 hours a week. The figures include not only the work of those two people, but other people in the firm working on the inquiry.

Chaytor's billings include the work of a researcher and a second lawyer hired from her firm, Cox & Palmer.

When it called the inquiry, the provincial government set a July 30 deadline for its report to be delivered.