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

I will respond briefly because we have explored a number of matters already. I do not understand why Deputy Collins believes a new, alternative model by which legal services can be provided will result in the concentration of all services through that model. According to that theory, there could be a small number of solicitors firms with expertise only in particular areas. The existence of an alternative structure through which to give legal advice does not, in itself, create a monopoly of expertise in a particular legal area within that structure. I do not understand the Deputy's argument and do not know where it is coming from.

The objective is that one will be able to gain access to legal advice through alternative business models.

At present, for example, if one visits a solicitor's firm one will consult with a solicitor. In some instances, one might meet a legal executive whom the solicitor might authorise to talk to one about something. However, if such a legal executive speaks to or engages with one, one would expect it to be under the supervision of the solicitor. There is not a suggestion that one will create multidisciplinary practices in which there is a range of individuals who have no legal qualification but who are pretending to be lawyers, because that is not the way this should work. There is an interesting issue in that in its recent proposed amendments, the Law Society suggested some small amendment that might be made to the legislation to provide a protection in that regard. Again, I greatly appreciate the constructive engagement we are having in that context as we tease through the Bill. Consequently, there is no suggestion that one can create a multidisciplinary practice and then throw up a series of unqualified people who pretend to be lawyers and who give people advice, any more than a solicitor's firm would throw up a whole range of unqualified people who pretend to give people advice but do not have the qualifications to do it. There is no particular reason this should emerge to any greater extent from a multidisciplinary practice than out of a solicitor's firm. If one has in place the correct regulatory structures, it will not. Of course a multidisciplinary practice, just like barristers or solicitors, probably will employ non-lawyers, secretarial assistants and people to do other back-up work. That is part of the way the law has operated for many years.

I do not understand why the creation of multidisciplinary practices should make it more expensive to get legal advice. One of the great things about human beings in different walks of life who have expertise is they wish to ply their trade. Lawyers - and I am one - on occasion like to think that what we do is terribly mysterious and that we do something so mysterious that the rest of the world does not understand it. Whether one is a lawyer, an engineer, a doctor, a plumber or a landscape gardener, one has an expertise in one's life and one sells that service to assist individuals who need it. Moreover, one earns a living by getting paid for what one does. It is no more mysterious than that, and providing an alternative mechanism through which one can deliver legal services is simply what it says on the tin, an alternative mechanism. The world, strangely, has not collapsed in England with all the reforms that have been introduced there in the past three or four years, to which Members of this House, the public and the legal profession in Ireland appear to be oblivious. A revolution is taking place an hour's flight away in the provision of legal services but what is interesting about that revolution is that it is still only a small proportion of practising qualified lawyers, in respect of a small proportion of the business mechanisms through which legal services are provided, who are using the new mechanisms. They are there, they are being used and they are providing opportunities, legal assistance and advice. However, many lawyers, because they are happy with the economics and the architecture of the way they have been doing business in decades past, have not changed. Nevertheless, I am providing the opportunity for change and evolution.

Finally, what is really interesting in this regard is that one Maeve Hosier has written a marvellous PhD thesis entitled "The Regulation of the Legal Profession in Ireland", which should be compulsory reading for us all. It sets out the history of the legal profession and how it evolved. It evolved continually until approximately 1870 and then went into paralysis and nothing has changed since. The only thing that has changed subsequently was as a result of the enactment of the Courts Act 1971, when the then Minister for Justice, Des O'Malley, conferred rights of audience on solicitors in all the superior courts. That is the only fundamental change effected since approximately 1870 to the manner in which the Irish legal profession operates. It is extraordinarily curious that people think the world stopped in 1870.