Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This straightforward amendment concerns the appointment of a monitor as an additional legislative safeguard over the retained functions of the Law Society in relation to the financial regulation of solicitors, and to the maintenance of the solicitors' compensation fund.

The purpose of amendment No. 159 is to amend the Legal Services Regulation Bill to provide the new authority with the power to appoint a member or members of staff to be a monitor for the purposes of attending meetings of relevant committees of the Law Society which are dealing with the investigation of solicitors in respect mainly of the solicitors' accounts regulation.

As already pointed out to the House, the Law Society will retain oversight of solicitors' accounts, financial conduct and associated matters. Part of the oversight role of the new authority in relation to the Law Society's retained functions is the presence of the LRSA monitor at committees where decisions are being made regarding the action to be taken in relation to a solicitor.

The role of the monitor will be to attend and observe. It is provided that the authority may request reports from the monitor from time to time in relation to the performance of their functions. The new authority is also empowered under the legislation to make recommendations to the Minister for legislative change. The intention is that any recommendations arising from the monitor's attendance at Law Society committee meetings would feed into these recommendations. Therefore, this is to ensure that the LRSA has access to what is happening in those committees, can report back, and can make recommendations based on his or her observations of the Law Society's committee meetings in relation to these matters.

The purpose of amendment No. 267, which dovetails with this, is to amend the Solicitors Acts so as to provide in the legislation governing the Law Society that an LRSA monitor may attend and observe at any relevant meeting, and oblige the society to inform the authority of the place and time of any such meeting. This makes it clear that we now have an independent authority with the power to send somebody to attend meetings of the Law Society at any point in time. Equally, the Law Society has to tell the LRSA when and where it is having its meetings.

This inserts a new section 14C into the Solicitors Act 1994, which provides for the presence of a monitor appointed by the LRSA to attend at meetings of Law Society committees which have powers or functions of investigating alleged misconduct by a solicitor. It mirrors the power to appoint such a monitor which has been inserted into the Legal Services Regulation Bill by amendment No. 159.

Senators will recall that a key part of the strategy, which involves the retention of certain solicitors' oversight and misconduct issues by the society, is that the operation of these functions will be subject to oversight by the new authority. One of the key components of the oversight is that we have this monitoring arrangement and engagement in a practical way between the LRSA and the committees of the Law Society.