Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I mean no disrespect when I say that this is a fairly arcane area as far as parliamentarians are concerned. We would not really be in a position to evaluate or assess the information we get at Estimate time about the Office of the Chief State Solicitor. It is very difficult to form a view on it. There have been celebrated cases in the past fitting into the first category mentioned by the Minister of State, that is, cases that might be deemed to have a constitutional basis but there have also been a number of celebrated cases where the advice to the State or to the Minister was the State should not mediate or settle the case because that would mean the end of civilisation as we know it. The advice was that there would be terrible knock-on effects and so forth but I have been around long enough to know that once or twice we had to suck it and see. After all of the delays and so forth, the outcomes were embarrassing but the house of cards did not come tumbling down. That may well not be a matter that the Chief State Solicitor's office decides upon but it is an issue nonetheless.

In terms of the delays to which Deputy Fleming quite properly drew attention, is the Minister of State in a position to clarify the impact of the Court of Appeal? Will that court facilitate speedier resolution of cases? How much of this relates to how the system works, namely that lawyers determine the speed with which these cases are disposed of? At the end of a number of years, lawyers can decide that they want to mediate, negotiate and settle but those options were out of the question earlier on. The costs mount up and we are not really competent to say that the fees paid out are fair. I presume the Minister of State will say that they are market prices but to the man or woman on the street, the market prices are almost incomprehensible. Is the Minister of State in a position to say how the last eight years of recession have impacted on fees? Have the fees dispensed come down appreciably? Is that evident in the sense that the recession affected every other section of the community? Have fees come down in the case of lawyers?