Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman for taking us through all of the amendments and my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Murphy, for supporting me in the passage of the Bill today. I take this opportunity to express my thanks to Members of the House, the Seanad and the joint committee, which did a lot of work on the Bill. They have all helped to bring it to its final stage. I want to pay particular thanks to my predecessor, Deputy Alan Shatter, who, as Minister, launched the Bill and steered it through Committee Stage in the Dáil. Many people have put in a significant amount of work into this very complex and comprehensive Bill over a long period of time, as we heard during the course of the debate today.

I thank in particular the staff of the Department of Justice and Equality who have done Trojan work on this Bill, with all its complexities. Conan McKenna, Richard Fallon and Clare Dowling, who have joined me here today, worked in a painstaking and detailed way over months and years. I also thank the many drafters in the Office of the Attorney General who did likewise and the Attorney General for her support throughout the developments in the Bill and the very complex issues we had to deal with in the transition the Bill represents to an independent regulatory authority.

This is a major transition. It moves us into a system of independent regulation of legal services in this country for the first time and it also introduces independent opportunities to examine complaints and disciplinary issues within legal services, which is extremely important.

Many people were involved in the development of the Bill. The parliamentary draftsmen were very patient in working with the detailed amendments we had to bring forward. Sometimes there were amendments to amendments because so many technical elements needed to be worked through in the Seanad and Dáil. I thank the Bills Office for its support in getting this complex Bill through the Houses.

Today, we discussed why we are enacting the Bill. Its purpose is to create a statutory regulator of all legal practitioners for the first time in the history of the State. The existing regime has no statutory regulation of barristers and there is nowhere other than professional bodies to which the public and clients can go with complaints. The professional bodies provided a large amount of detail to us, which was necessary because there will be a transition from the work they are doing. We needed a large amount of detail from them on the work they had been doing for decades. As I said, this is a major transition.

The Bill provides for complaints about legal practitioners, from whatever source, including clients, to be dealt with by an independent statutory body for the first time. I repeat what I said earlier, that is, that this Bill introduces new business models to increase competition in legal services. There are a series of measures to deal with the costs in the legal services market. The Bill will benefit consumers because there will now be an independent body. There will be an independent pathway, greater clarity regarding costs and pre-action protocols for medical negligence cases. There will shortly be a choice of various business models for the provision of legal services. The market will open up in a way which it has not to date because of the availability of new business models.

There is an outline of the work programme which the legal services regulatory authority will have to undertake in the years ahead. There are provisions to examine legal training. There will be further opportunities through new competitive practices and a greater range of partnerships once research has been done. For the first time limited liability partnerships will be available, which will be helpful in terms of competition. Once the Bill is enacted and the authority established, consumers will be provided with greater clarity about costs. They will be able to go into a practice where a solicitor and barrister or barrister and barrister work together.

I have no doubt that, given the changes in the market we have seen internationally, this is the beginning of new models in this country. It is inevitable that we will see a range of adaptation around those models in the years ahead.

I again point to the important provisions we have introduced regarding barristers who are employees representing their employers.There is a very strong provision in regard to professional associations. There can be no interference in the establishment of these new models. The legal services regulatory authority will have a very strong oversight role when it comes to the development of new models. As I have already outlined, it will be involved in the general oversight of legal services, but also oversight when it comes to discipline and complaints.

I again thank all those involved in the development of the Bill. I look forward to it coming into law and being implemented. We will now move on to the appointment of the CEO and board, which will have a lay majority, another important point. The Bill will benefit consumers.

I thank the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission for its recommendations. We are fulfilling the vast majority of the recommendations in its report. We made some recent changes to the Bill to improve the schedule of costs, something it recommended. I look forward to the coming into being next year of the legal services regulatory authority.

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