Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We do not need duplication in these areas, with the professions regulating themselves and oversight of the professions. There is also an issue of public confidence. The model we are seeking to implement replicates the approach taken in Australia, although it is not identical, rather than the British model.

I do not think anyone has sold the British model as an ideal to be adapted in other jurisdictions. We are a different jurisdiction and should take a different approach.

I agree with Deputy Mac Lochlainn on one issue. Let us take the Law Society as an example. I think it has, in recent years, done what it can do to ensure it has a complaints system that seeks to deal with complaints made in a rigorous fashion. There is a problem with a professional body determining complaints made about a member of its own profession. It is the old issue: not only should justice be done, but it should be seen to be done. There should be no suggestion of bias. I am not suggesting there is, but there is a public perception of concern. In the past there have been issues of concern surrounding the manner in which some complaints are dealt with. I am not going to cast any stones because I do not know whether all of the concerns expressed are right. Part of the troika's requirements included the implementation of reform. The Government made a decision that was in the public interest. It decided there should be independent oversight of the two professions and an independent complaints structure about which no one can raise issues with regard to vested interests or a bias in the decision-making process. This is the correct way to go.

I regard the process that we are engaged in, because no one has a monopoly of wisdom in these things, as very valuable. We have had a lengthy consultative process. I would have liked to commence Committee Stage earlier, but the work that had to be undertaken on the insolvency Bill delayed matters, as the Office of the Attorney General was not in a position to deal with it. We will continue to tease out issues through Committee and Report Stages.

I believe this model is in the public interest. It can give public confidence in the manner in which complaints are dealt with, but it is much broader than that. It looks at other areas relating to the legal professions, including the provision of new business models and what may need to be done to ensure they can have in place any changed or appropriate regulatory structures or codes of conduct. It looks at a whole range of things that could not happen without having an independent regulatory authority. If matters were simply left as they are with an oversight body, such as the Legal Services Ombudsman, operating then the only role really would be what has already been done by the professions at present.

This also brings together a unified complaints system that applies to both branches of the profession, the solicitors' profession and the Bar. In public terms, there is more visibility and understanding of the approach taken by the solicitors' profession than of the Bar. Obviously, I am familiar with both approaches. Where complaints are made about members of the legal profession there should be consistency in how they are approached. Similar issues arise. I know that there are discrete issues that may presently arise in relation to solicitors that will not currently arise in relation to members of the Bar. There are other areas where they overlap. On occasion a complaint may be made by a client about a solicitor and a barrister who are both engaged in one area of litigation and jointly representing a client. If a complaint is made now, the complaint against the barrister is dealt with under one structure by one particular disciplinary body and that against the solicitor is dealt with under another structure by the solicitors' disciplinary body. In those circumstances, surely it is in the public interest, and in the interest of the members of the legal profession, to take this course of action, because not all complaints that are made are valid. Many spurious complaints are made against members of the legal profession who have absolutely done their best for their clients. On occasion, complaints are made by clients who have not told the full story to the legal professionals representing them and then blame the legal professionals when something goes wrong. I think a consistency of decision-making on complaints by one body, where the complaints may involve both branches of the profession arising out of one issue, is important. This structure provides for that.

Finally, I wish to return to something that Deputy Niall Collins said, which I absolutely agree with. In the current financial climate there is absolutely no doubt, in recent years, that various solicitors' practices have found themselves in far more difficult financial times than has been the case in the past. There are many solicitors, in the 2008-10 period, who lost their jobs as firms contracted. We have - I am open to correction if the figure is wrong - more than 1,000 young solicitors who are unemployed. Many members of the Bar who are fully and properly qualified are departing the Bar because there is no work available to them. I am not suggesting that every solicitor earns huge amounts of money. I quoted the troika, who took an oversight view of fees being charged in, I think, some general and commercial areas. It rightly or wrongly formed the view, which I was reciting, that legal fees generally in some areas have not decreased. I am personally aware, as I am sure the Deputies are, of firms that have hit hard financial times and have reduced the charges they issue to clients whom they represent. I would not want to be misrepresented in any way; I am not suggesting, across the legal professions and solicitors who are in every town and city in this country, that everyone is doing terribly well. There are many who are not doing well. There are many in difficulties. There are young solicitors who cannot get jobs at the moment. Providing greater competition, new business models and new opportunities will benefit not just the public but the legal profession itself.