The Law Society supports moves to reduce the cost of tribunals, its director general said today.
Responding to a newspaper report, Mr Ken Murphy said less than 1 per cent of his members had worked for tribunals, yet the legal profession as a whole had been tarnished because of high fees paid to a few lawyers.
He said that in public relations terms, tribunals were "the greatest disaster ever to befall the legal profession in Ireland, and I've been saying this for five or six years".
The Law Society supports reforms such as those suggested by the Law Reform Commission and the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, who proposes replacing tribunals with Commissions of Inquiry where legal costs would be much lower.
Mr Murphy supports such moves which he says are "long overdue". "The system put in place [for paying tribunal fees] is completely inappropriate . . . particularly the daily-rates principle".
He was responding to an Irish Independentreport today which predicted the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, would announce "tough new measures within weeks". The report says Mr McCreevy intends to replace the current daily-rate system with a fixed-fee system.
Tribunals have cost the State around €300 million to date and have come under severe criticism from the Dáil Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller and Auditor General.
Some estimates suggests legal costs could reach over €1 billion and the chairman of the Planning Tribunal, Judge Alan Mahon, recently warned that his inquiry could take another 11 years to complete.
The Department of Finance refused to comment on today's report, but Mr McCreevy has indicated in the past that he will move to reform tribunals and the system of paying fees.
The daily rate for a Senior Counsel at a tribunal is around €2,000 and often higher.