Dr. Brian Doherty:

I will say a couple of things on the introduction of legal partnerships. It is mandated under the 2015 Act. This is something that LSRA has to take on. We have not taken it on in isolation; we have written two reports on legal partnerships that are available. One was on the practice in other jurisdictions and the other was on public consultation. We then conducted a wide-ranging public consultation in order to inform the regulations themselves and the code of practice for practising barristers. The purpose of the consultation was also to try to identify issues, such as the one the Leas-Chathaoirleach, raised in respect of the independent referral Bar in order that we would attempt to address it within the code. I will hand over to my colleague Ms McIntyre in a moment to comment on that specific issue.

We have made extensive efforts to ensure that the legal partnership model will be put in place before the end of the year. We will seek to ensure that we can make it as competitive a model as possible and that the outcome of it will be to allow for a single-stop shop that will mean consumers can go to one solicitor-barrister partnership. Alternatively, it will provide that barristers who may not feel that life at the Bar of Ireland is for them may have another method of delivering legal services in partnership with colleagues and, therefore, being able to share and drive costs down. In the context of the Leas-Chathaoirleach's question on timelines, legal partnerships will be in place before the end of the year. On multidisciplinary practices, we will allow legal partnerships a period to bed in and we will then learn what lessons we can from what occurs in respect of them, the take-up relating to them and any issues that arise.

We will then focus our minds on multidisciplinary practices following that. I will ask Ms McIntyre to take the question on the role of the regulatory authority.