Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank all Senators who contributed to this debate, especially Senators Phelan and Boyle, for their positive contributions and support for the Bill. I have lived all my life with lawyers, and I am the only member of a family of five who is not a lawyer. I have a great affection for the profession, but I often joke that I am the only honest member of the family as a result. I stress that is a joke, rather than a statement of fact.

I have also worked with lawyers in my business career, and I have always found them to be excellent. It is important, notwithstanding the controversies surrounding bankers, lawyers, churchmen and politicians to which Senator Bacik referred, that the majority of people in all of these professions are honest, hard working people who do not transgress the ethical, moral or legal codes. It is only a minority of people who abuse the public trust in all of these professions. Regulation must take cognisance of that fact more than any other.

Senator McDonald's questioning of the need for an extra layer is shared by the Minister and the Government. While the establishment of the office of the legal services ombudsman may be represented in some quarters as the imposition of an extra layer of regulation, or as a duplication or replication of the work of the existing and overarching Office of the Ombudsman, which is led by Emily O'Reilly, this office will not be paid for out of the public purse. It will be paid for by means of a levy on the profession itself and for that reason, this phenomenon should be encouraged. I am sceptical about the levels and layers of extra obligation we have imposed on professions, businesses and industries over the past ten years. In light of the downturn, the recession and the general Exchequer funding and public spending challenges we face, it is time to examine the relevance of all these regulators, particularly the Commission for Energy Regulation, the Commission for Aviation Regulation and the Commission for Taxi Regulation. It almost defies belief that we have a Taxi Regulator, as the regulation of the taxi industry should be a matter for the Minister rather than for a well paid regulator in a large office.

I would like to speak about an important aspect of this legislation. Senator McDonald spoke about the making of frivolous complaints. Section 22(4) of the Bill empowers the office of the legal services ombudsman to decide not to investigate a complaint it considers frivolous or to discontinue an investigation of such a complaint. This ensures that the ombudsman's time and resources are not wasted. Senator McDonald suggested that a limited number of complaints have some validity. That is why the Bill empowers the ombudsman to siphon off such complaints quickly. That is a fair point. The number of complaints made is not huge, relatively speaking.

Senator Bacik referred to the Competition Authority's report on the legal profession. The report makes 29 recommendations in respect of solicitors and barristers, 15 of which relate to actions for which the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is responsible. Some of the recommendations are directed at the Bar Council and the Law Society. The implementation of the recommendations directed at the Bar Council and the Law Society is a matter for those bodies. The main recommendation is that legislation should be introduced to establish a legal services commission to regulate solicitors, barristers and the market for legal services. A further seven recommendations relate to the functions of the legal services commission. Government policy on the need for changes in the legal profession is reflected in the Bill before the House, which provides for customers to avail of a formal review of legal services if they are dissatisfied with the outcome of a complaint made to the Law Society or the Bar Council. A number of other issues are material.

Senator Bacik also spoke about the timeframe for the making of complaints. Section 22 provides that a complaint can be made to the office of the legal services ombudsman if a professional body fails to complete an investigation into alleged misconduct within a "reasonable time". If the Bar Council's professional conduct tribunal, the Bar Council's professional conduct of appeals board or the Law Society fails to complete its investigation of an allegation of misconduct made by a client of a barrister or a solicitor within a reasonable timeframe, the client may make a complaint about this failure to the ombudsman's office. We have avoided the imposition of arbitrary time limits under this section in the belief that the ombudsman should have the discretion to determine what constitutes a reasonable timeframe in each case.

Senator Quinn highlighted the powers of the office of the legal services ombudsman. Typically, an ombudsman can investigate complaints made by members of the public in respect of the actions of Government agencies or regulatory bodies, make recommendations to improve the handling by such bodies of complaints and report on its assessment of existing mechanisms for handling complaints. Many countries around the world give powers of a similar scope to their various ombudsman offices. It is consistent with the approach taken by the ombudsman offices in this country. The primary role of an ombudsman office is to act as an independent review body. This is the common thread that runs through most of the functions of such offices. The role of the office of the legal services ombudsman is to investigate the manner in which professional bodies deal with complaints. Professional bodies are responsible for investigating complaints about lawyers.

Senator Quinn spoke about restrictions on the numbers going into the legal profession. Under this legislation, the office of the legal services ombudsman is empowered to assess, where necessary, the numbers being allowed or not allowed into the profession each year. I reassure the Senator who raised these concerns by informing him that the legal services ombudsman must work on the basis of the public interest. The "public interest" is defined in terms of the affordability of access to law and, by extension, to justice. The ombudsman does not assess whether we should have 1,000, 10,000 or 1 million lawyers. He or she simply makes a judgment call on whether the quantitative or qualitative restrictions on numbers act in a way that increases the cost of accessing the courts and therefore denies citizens the chance to achieve redress through the legal system. That is the key point. The ombudsman is not an avatar of competitiveness or policies of competition. Issues of justice and access to the law at an affordable cost for ordinary citizens are predominant here. It is clear that issues in this regard have arisen over the years. We should be honest about it.

The legal profession is not the only profession to have inflated its fees in recent years. The fees charged by doctors in the medical profession, and by many other professionals and providers of professional and personal services, increased during the boom. Many of these people have taken excessive fees because of the boom. That will be an even bigger issue in the next few years, obviously, as we face into a downturn. We have to get our costs down. I do not want to refer particularly to lawyers in this regard. The professions in general — lawyers, accountants, doctors and other people who provide private or personal fee-based services — will have to re-examine their structures. It is a huge priority for the Government. We need to get to grips with these fees in the context of the downturn and recession we are experiencing.