Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo Senator Coghlan's comments. I compliment the Labour Party Senators, in particular Senators Whelan and Landy, and the Minister of State, Deputy Ann Phelan, for agreeing to study the question of legal costs and the substitution of a no-fault system for the adversarial system. It is a most interesting matter as we do have high legal costs in Ireland. A figure in the NTMA annual report 2014 is for an award of €1.9 million to a child who received catastrophic injuries. The legal costs in that case were over €1 million. The Taxing Master reduced those legal costs to €373,500. Does a no-fault system encourage frivolous, vexatious or badly-proven claims? Does the adversarial system curb those? Does the adversarial system cost too much? It is a most interesting reform and I wish that study well.

I wish to extend congratulations to the staff and students of Magee College, Ulster University, Derry, which celebrates 150 years next week. I congratulate their provost, Professor Deirdre Heenan, as they come together to celebrate that anniversary. It is a remarkable college in the history of this country. Members may recall that when the Lockwood committee recommended the closure of Magee College in 1961 - it was then operating as a junior college of Trinity College Dublin - it brought together both sides of the Derry community for the first time. The links in scholarship include such distinguished people as Professor Terence Brown and Professor Aidan Clarke, two well-known people in the humanities. The college now has 4,000 students. One would not dream of closing a university of that size today. The population of Derry has doubled since the 1960s from 54,000 to 108,000.

The Magee College anniversary celebrates a community that came together in a foretaste of many cases of co-operation between both sides of the community in Derry. It showed the way ahead to the power sharing Executive that we have today. It celebrates the rise of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mr. John Hume, in public life and the period when he had the support of the Unionist Lord Mayor of Londonderry, as it was. It celebrates the success of the north west, under new political arrangements in Northern Ireland and the success of education in the community, and in particular in the city of Derry. It also celebrates the contribution made to this island by the Presbyterian community, the largest denomination of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. It celebrates a city that was proud to stand by its university when bureaucrats and politicians of a different hue sought to shut it down. The anniversary is a great social, political and educational event that will be celebrated in Derry next week.