Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)

That is the best way to describe the proposals contained in the Bill.

There are many problems with the Bill. It seems the Minister has reluctantly admitted there are problems with it, following the exertion of pressure from all quarters. There was no consultation and no research conducted in advance into the many proposals made in the Bill. In fact, a number of key proposals go against the recommendations of the Competition Authority in its report on the legal professions in 2006. The authority recommended that there be independent oversight, a model which would see an independent regulator overseeing the work of the front-line regulators, the Law Society of Ireland and the Bar Council of Ireland. This type of model is consistent with international best practice and is far more effective and cost-efficient. The Minister now knows that he was wrong about the independence of the legal services regulatory authority and it seems he is now going to do something to fix that. The Bill as it stands provides for a level of government control over the appointment and running of the regulatory body which will run directly contrary to the core value of independence in the administration of justice. This is not just the view of the members of the Irish legal profession. The Bill has been widely criticised by various international groups, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, CCBE, the International Bar Association and the American Bar Association. The Minister has finally realised that the system of ministerial control over the functions and appointment of members of the regulatory board was not appropriate and it seems he is now considering amendments to deal with the situation. It must be said that the person who never made a mistake never made anything and if the Minister is willing to consider amendments then this is to be welcomed.

Apart from the proposals in the Bill there are clearly other ways of dealing with regulation of the legal professions. For example, the Bar Council has suggested a form of independent regulation of the legal professions by an independent regulator of the nature and type recommended by the Competition Authority in its 2006 report. The regulator would be independent of the legal professions and of the Government. The Bar Council and the Law Society already have systems in place to regulate their members so there is no need for the Minister to re-invent the wheel. All that is needed is an independent regulator to oversee and supervise the regulation by the Law Society and the Bar Council. This would be a more efficient and effective form of regulation to that proposed in the Bill. It would also be considerably less costly. I ask the Minister to give serious consideration to this alternative proposal.

With regard to the cost of the regulatory body, the Minister was wrong about the costs of the regulatory body and he will need to go back to the drawing board. No regulatory impact assessment was carried out before this Bill was published. The establishment of this new quango without any prior assessment of the costs and the economic case for same, runs directly counter to good governance, common sense and the policy commitments in the programme for Government 2011. At a time when the nation is on its knees we cannot afford to even talk about setting up new quangos without any proper prior assessment of the costs involved. What has happened to the pre-election promises to abolish or merge quangos? It seems that the Minister's master plan is that the legal profession will have to bear the entire cost of this new quango. It does not take a mathematical genius or an honours maths student to figure out that the costs associated with the new quango will inevitably be passed on to consumers and that, ultimately, it is the public who will have to pay for the Minister's newest quango.

The county of Kerry has provided some of the nation's most distinguished solicitors and barristers over the years with the Liberator being the most famous. These proposals are daft when one thinks about it; if they had been around during O'Connell's time, he would have been regulated and overseen not by the Law Library, his colleagues or the King's Inns, but by a political appointee of Pitt the Younger or George III. What is more, he would have had to pay for the privilege of being regulated.

The Minister is also wrong about the introduction of multi-disciplinary practices. This new type of business model would see the cream of the crop of solicitors and barristers setting up in practice together. Needless to say, these practices would be concentrated in the capital, where some people think that the world stops at the Red Cow roundabout, and in the other main cities. The proposals have the potential to make the profession more elitist and prevent people entering or developing a practice by concentrating the best lawyers in a small number of large city firms. The proposed structures will undermine small solicitors' firms up and down the country who rely on ready access to independent barristers in order to be able to compete on a level playing pitch with the large city firms. These local solicitors are in and out of court every day defending people and in many cases where a client's liberty may be at stake, the solicitors need to be able to call on the best barristers to help out. Under the new system the best of the barristers may be tied into one of these new multi-disciplinary practices who may in turn be under a retainer and a contract to the main insurance firms who can afford to pay top dollar. For example, there are many fine solicitors in my native county and when they sit down with their clients to pick the best barrister team - be that at junior or senior level - to do battle in the field of the High Court in Dublin, they should have a free choice to pick who they want, as is the case now, rather than be hived off to one of those who did not make the cut into the multi-disciplinary chambers. These new chambers will make litigation more of an uphill struggle for the people of small towns in rural Ireland.

Concerns about the proposed structures have been expressed by FLAC, the Free Legal Advice Centres. For many long years FLAC has provided an invaluable service to people up and down the country who cannot afford to pay for legal advice. If FLAC says there are problems then the Minister should sit up and take heed of what it says. Legal partnerships and multi-disciplinary practices were not recommended by the Competition Authority nor by the legal costs working group or in the programme for Government. No independent economic assessment of this or other models of business structure for the delivery of legal services has been undertaken prior to the publication of the Bill.

The Minister also seems to want to merge the two professions of barristers and solicitors in some way. I am not sure whether he wants them all to be solicitors or all to be barristers or whether he knows himself. The fact that the Minister is a solicitor might have something to do with it but I do not know. However, I know that it does not make any sense to start throwing the whole system upside down without properly engaging with the professions and, more particularly, considering the implications for the public.

Cutting legal costs is a very important consideration. I will give credit where credit is due. I welcome the provisions of the Bill dealing with the actual costs of legal services and the introduction of a more transparent legal costs regime. In the current economic climate, people must be able to get value for money and it is crucial that people should be entitled to shop around for solicitors and barristers offering the most competitive estimate for any legal work. We need transparency on the fees to be charged and oversight to ensure the fees paid reflect the work actually done. I welcome those parts of the Bill dealing with costs.

The Minister will, no doubt, say the troika required him to publish a legal services Bill by October 2011. However, that does not excuse the publication of the Bill in its current format without a proper consideration and study of the public interests involved and without solid information on the costs involved and other impacts of the Bill if enacted in that form. It seems bizarre in the extreme that the Minister, a member of the legal profession, could have come up with some of the proposals made in the Bill without properly consulting his legal colleagues and also bodies such as FLAC. It seems from the general reaction to the Bill that he has alienated and antagonised much of the legal profession in the process of introducing it. He has been a respectable, hard-working solicitor for more than 35 years and is the author of a book on family law. He is certainly no slacker when it comes to taking on work and has sat on the lauded benches in front of the Supreme Court on many an occasion, as was his right. Now, however, he needs to take a step back, take a deep breath and seek wiser counsel.

What I want for the members of the public I serve is the provision of a top class legal service which will be available to all and sundry at a reasonable cost. However, it seems the Bill will not do the job it is meant to do. I, therefore, call on the Minister to go back to the drawing board. He must go back to his colleagues in the legal profession - if they are still talking to him - get the views of the public, knock heads together and sort out this issue once and for all.

One issue on which I have focused is the importance of local solicitors. The Minister is as aware as I am, as well as all Members of the House who deal with the public on a daily basis, that family firms of solicitors operate in smaller cities, towns and villages which have provided a great service for generations. Children have followed in the footsteps of their parents, be they solicitors or barristers. They have had an interest in the legal profession just like those who have followed their forebears into the political profession. The reason they do so is they know what it is like, get a liking for it, want to study it and serve in that line. I am afraid that what the Minister has proposed will centralise the legal profession in the larger cities, from which the best barristers will work. They will be debarred from operating for smaller solicitor firms. By stealth, the smaller firms of solicitors throughout the country will be squeezed out. They provide employment in their own local areas for the staff who work in their offices. They pay rates and their taxes and are a valuable part of the community. We would all be happier if we never had to go to a solicitor, but life does not work out that way. Therefore, I am afraid of the big monopoly the Minister is creating. He does not have a grasp of the implications, despite the fact that he is an eminent and great solicitor. Unfortunately, he has been based in Dublin for 35 years and is one of those who thinks everything finishes at the Red Cow.

We have all heard about the great things the Government intends to do in office. On a daily basis the previous Government was criticised, yet the solution offered when the Government took office was that it would set up a new quango. That is not right. That is not what the Government parties campaigned for. At the same time the Government seems to be very good at providing jobs for its own crowd. I could quote instances, but I will not.

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