Ivana Bacik (Independent)

The Bar Council has already raised with the Minister of State the cost of the legal ombudsman service. Section 11 gives the necessary power to the ombudsman to employ persons on particular terms and conditions and to engage the services of professional and other advisers and so forth. That is important. It is necessary to keep the cost of running the service as low as possible. Given the difficult times we are in I am sure the Minister of State will be in full agreement with that. The figures for other commissions are available, for example, the running costs for the Standards in Public Office were just over €1 million of which €737,000 was staff costs. Costs in any of these services or agencies can run high, even when kept fairly tight and within budget. I have no doubt the legal services ombudsman will keep to strict budgets but it is necessary to ensure that superfluous staff are not recruited under the authority of this section.