Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am getting to them. This legislation has been on a long journey. As Deputy Shatter said earlier, it was published in late 2011. The real test of whether the Bill will pass muster is whether consumers will see reductions in legal fees. We need to be conscious that outside the big law houses in Dublin, many of the small and medium-sized practitioners throughout the country and across Dublin have, like many other small businesses, been significantly affected by the recession of recent years. Many solicitors have gone out of business following a downturn in business caused by forces in the economy. Many people who were employed in law firms and solicitors' practices throughout the country have lost their jobs. It is not right to say they are all living high on the hog and that this is an entire gravy train. Having said that, studies that have been produced have shown that some of the larger legal services providers charge excessively high fees. Many of them often charge such fees to the State. We have seen huge reportage of that. It has played out time and again below in the Committee of Public Accounts.

I reiterate that we need to be mindful of the needs of small and medium-sized legal practitioners.

An example of this is a solicitor in Kerry who recently told me used to have a practice of 2.5 solicitors, with the necessary administrative support staff of up to eight, but as a result of the recession he is on his own, working from his house. Many legal practices are now operating from a virtual office, using a shared services call centre to deal with post, administration and answering the phones. There has been a sea change in this regard but fees will be the big one.

I know the Minister has to leave so her colleague beside her might take notes on this matter. Will the new authority deal with a case to which my attention has been drawn recently? That person took an action against the State. It went through the process and came to court but was ultimately settled on the steps of the court, with the State agreeing to pay damages in the order of €100,000 plus legal fees. When he went to conclude his business with his solicitor, his solicitor endeavoured to retain €10,000 of the €100,000 in addition to the fees the State had agreed to pay. In other words, the solicitor was engaged in double charging, something we have seen over the years. He made the Law Society aware of the issue in correspondence but got no satisfaction from the Law Society. The Law Society pointed out that there was no written agreement but the solicitor said there was a verbal agreement and this is now in dispute. The person who brought the case now finds himself in the situation where it is his word as against the solicitor's word and they are left to argue it out between themselves. What does a citizen do in such a situation? They cannot get their hands on an award given by way of settlement because their solicitor is paid fees on one side by the State, through the Taxing Master, while at the same time looking for a slice of the action on the other side.

The Minister made a couple of points on mediation. I know it is not particularly relevant to the passing of this Bill but free legal aid is related to the provision of legal services and this needs to be looked at in the context of mediation. We have free legal aid in criminal cases but we need to have a look at the civil side of things. The criminal legal aid demand uses up the entire amount of the budget but people are coming into our clinics, day in, day out and week in, week out, looking for civil free legal aid.

I welcome the passage of the Bill, whether it is today or tomorrow, and the fact that we will have a new regime. The engagement with both the Bar Council and the Law Society was very detailed and they were right to lobby us. That is what democracy is all about and stakeholder groups should be able to engage with their politicians. Some people mentioned the media reporting of it. It has to be done in an open and transparent fashion. They came and stated their case, as did the association representing legal executives who may not have got entirely what they wanted but who made some progress. We are all happy to engage with stakeholders in the passage of legislation.

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