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

No, I said it requires a far broader debate. I did not say I intended to bring forward legislation. If there were to be legislation, before any Government or Minister makes a decision, there is a need for a wider debate on the roles of legal executives, the outer limits of the roles and what education system should be put in place to ensure consistency of knowledge and education. We should also consider the extent to which legal executives have grown around the legal profession. There may be a number of individuals who are very competent in the work they do, styled as legal executives, and they may exclusively work on, for example, conveyancing and may have no expertise outside that, which they do very well and efficiently. Another individual may know something about law and the personal injuries area but, outside that, has no knowledge of expertise but acts as a legal executive in that area and works under the supervision of a solicitor. It is not simply a question of deciding to have legislation and then trying to search out what the legislation should prescribe. Public policy issues must be addressed including the diversity of roles legal executives currently play, whether it is in the public interest or not that they be regulated in a particular way, if they were to be regulated what should be the nature of the regulation and in what way could regulation ensure it worked appropriately and, to use that awful word I used earlier, seamlessly in its interaction with the legal professions as they operate.

How does one ensure a member of the public, if he or she approaches someone who is a legal executive rather than a barrister or a solicitor, has knowledge of the level of expertise of the individual with whom he or she is dealing? These are issues. I can tell the Deputy that, as a practising lawyer for many years, these are issues around which I have some concerns. There are some very good people working in confined areas as legal executives while there are some others who are legal executives but who may or may not have the qualifications to work in the areas in which they are working. A whole range of public interest issues need to be considered. I am not making a commitment to legislate but am saying that before we even get to that point, there is a whole range of policy issues which need to be considered in the context of the public interest. When some reasonable decisions are made on those, there is then the question as to whether there is or is not a need for legislation. The legislative provisions will not be contained in this particular Bill because of the need for us to bring to completion the legislative process in an area which is already as complex as it need be and which is providing for very substantial reform.

It is worth mentioning the legal profession as it is in this State and as it developed to 1922. Members might like to read the history of how the legal profession developed in England and Ireland, or how it evolved through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It is in the form it is in more by accident than design for a whole range of reasons into which I will not go. The legal profession has not evolved or changed since 1922, as it has in other countries. This legislation provides the architecture for the possibility of evolution and change in the public interest and in the interests of those who are qualified lawyers and who have skills which can be utilised to generate income for them and skills which they can use in the interests of the public. The Bill provides for how that can be done in ways which reflect the way it is currently done in other ways while we completely update our provisions in regard to regulatory and disciplinary matters and deal with a broad range of legal cost issues in a manner which gives statutory expression to very important principles, some of which have been there for some time but which have not formed the part of our statute law. We have enough to deal with in this Bill without trying to extend its scope to an entirely different group of individuals.