Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the introduction of this Bill. It puts on a statutory footing the office of the legal services ombudsman, which will oversee the handling of complaints by the Bar Council and the Law Society. It will also review the procedures on admissions policy and will make reports to this House from time to time. The creation of the post of legal services ombudsman is a most significant development in the provision of legal services to the people of this country. Before Committee Stage of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2006, I made representations to the former Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Brian Lenihan, in which I strongly supported his proposal to remove provisions from that Bill that now form part of this Bill. I did this because I felt it was important that the proposed ombudsman Bill would be set up on the basis of its own individual statute. I do not believe that such a major development has any place in a Bill that reflected no more than a tidying up operation, something to which this House has become accustomed.

I welcome Deputy Lenihan's recognition that the provisions on the legal services ombudsman needed a dedicated Bill of their own, with a careful examination by both Houses and by the appropriate committee. It is unlikely that Members would have adequately scrutinised the measures on the ombudsman if they were not contained in a stand-alone individual Bill. The case is the same for general practitioners and, more important, for members of the general public. It is important that reference could be made to the legal services ombudsman Bill 2008, a dedicated title, rather than form part of another Bill. In future, we should have stand-alone Bills for criminal and civil law, be they amendment or consolidation Bills, rather than miscellaneous provisions Bills that can run to many sections and cause a certain amount of confusion.

Momentum for reform in this area has been building for some years. The report of the Competition Authority, published in late 2006, pointed to a pressing need to introduce reform in this area. The publication of the report on legal services provided some impetus for debate on the regulation of the legal profession, for both solicitors and barristers.

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