Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

While I appreciate that Deputy Casey would support the provision of civil legal aid to small businesses and enterprises, it is important that we do not lose sight of the enhanced and much more transparent legal cost regime that is being introduced at the moment under the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. This will impose greater transparency obligations on barristers and solicitors in the charging of legal fees to private and commercial clients and includes discussing the legal costs implications of any new developments in a case with a client before proceeding any further. The Act allows employed or corporate lawyers to act in proceedings on behalf of their employers and for direct access to barristers on non-contentious business. It also allows barristers sharing a premises to advertise themselves. This had all been prevented under existing codes. Under the Act, it will not be permissible for legal practitioners to set fees at a specified percentage or proportion of damages payable to a client from contentious business. Moreover, it will no longer be permissible for barristers to charge junior counsel fees at a specified percentage or proportion of those pertaining to senior counsel. In addition, there will be a new office of the legal costs adjudicator, which will replace the existing Office of the Taxing Master and maintain a publicly accessible register of determinations. It will be supported in its decisions by a set of legal cost principles contained in Schedule 1 to the 2015 Act.

As Deputy Casey may appreciate, a review of the administration of civil justice in Ireland has recently commenced under the chairmanship of the President of the High Court, Mr. Justice Peter Kelly. Among other things, this review will consider such areas as access to justice, reducing the costs of litigation, ensuring timely hearings and the removal of obsolete, unnecessary or indeed over-complex rules of practice and procedure.

On the matter of extending the scope of civil legal aid to corporate entities, I again point to the enormous demand for such legal aid, including in respect of sensitive litigation in areas such as family law. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, priority continues to be given to our more vulnerable citizens in the allocation of finite Exchequer funding in support of the provision of such legal aid.

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