THE CABINET is expected to finalise legislation to reform the legal profession to comply with targets imposed by the International Monetary Fund, the EU Commission and the European Central Bank for the third quarter of 2011.
The Legal Services Bill, designed to eliminate restrictions to practise in the legal profession, has been the subject of prolonged discussion and some disagreement among senior Ministers. Its publication is expected to be rushed through next week following talks to iron out disagreements at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.
The Government has hurried the publication of three Bills in the past two days to meet the troika’s demands.
The Competition (Amendment) Bill; the Single Pensions Bill and a Bill aimed at removing restrictions on general practitioners having access to medical card patients have all been published since Thursday.
In all, the memorandum of understanding on the bailout contained 21 conditions to be completed by the end of September, some eight of which were specifically focused on the financial sector. Officials from the IMF, the EU Commission and the ECB will visit Dublin on October 10th to assess the Government’s compliance with the targets and publish their findings 10 days later.
Officials from all relevant Government departments told The Irish Times this week they were confident the requirements had been satisfied, albeit with several relatively minor delays of which the troika was aware.
The Government must satisfy the troika that it is adhering to the agreement with the international bodies in order to continue drawing from the loans of €67 billion they are providing over a period of four years.
A critical condition to be met by the end of September related to the Croke Park agreement.
The memorandum states that if public service numbers had not been reduced sufficiently, and other savings had not been achieved, then pay cuts would have to be implemented.
The Government is confident that this target has been exceeded. The numbers of public servants will have fallen from more than 305,000 to under 300,000 by the end of 2011, well below the target figure of 302,000.
Many of the targets under the heading of financial sector reform have been completed since summer, though the Central Bank said yesterday that several of the more technical requirements were “ongoing”.
Among the main actions have been the merger of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide; a comprehensive plan on strengthening supervision of credit institutions; and the introduction of the Central Bank (Supervision and Enforcement) Bill in July.
There are seven conditions under the structural reform targets. A key reform was that of the long-standing registered employment agreements and employment regulation orders that governed pay and conditions, including overtime, in certain sheltered sectors.
Those long-standing agreements were threatened by an intervening event, an adverse High Court ruling this summer.
In response, the Government published reform plans and will publish legislation later this year.
The court ruling has essentially parked the debate on this thorny issue for several months.
The troika also insisted that the Government would introduce legislative changes to remove restrictions in three professions: legal, medical services and pharmacy services.
The Health (Provision of GP Services) Bill will allow a wider range of GPs provide medical services to eligible persons, and will end the “closed shop” nature of medical card lists.
The Legal Services Bill, brought forward by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, has proved more problematic with a number of Labour Ministers said to be dissatisfied with the proposed Bill’s provisions.
The Bill is now expected to be published later next week.
A spokesman for Minister for Health James Reilly said yesterday that the troika had agreed, after initial discussions, that no legislation was required to address competition issues in the pharmacy sector.
Instead, the profession has agreed to substantially reduce the mark-up on medicines prescribed to patients who have exceeded the monthly €120 threshold under the Drugs Repayment Scheme, thus achieving savings for the State.
Another major conditionality, the comprehensive spending review, has been fully collated and is being analysed and completed, according to the Department of Public Expenditure.
This condition was inserted at the insistence of the Government and is being driven by Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin.
It will form the basis for the multi-year budgetary plan and pre-budget outlook, which will be published at the end of this month, immediately after the presidential election.
The review is central to the Government’s plans to achieve alternative savings that might avoid the need for painful tax increases or cuts in December’s budget.
Mr Howlin also published new pension legislation this week that will reduce pension payments to new entrants to the public service. The main provision of the legislation reduces the pension payment from half of the final salary to half of a more modest career average.
The Competition Bill, published only two days ago, addresses the requirement of the EU Commission to strengthen competition law enforcement in Ireland through the use of more effective and more stringent sanctions.
Another EU Commission condition was a review of the cap on the size of retail premises.
