THE IRISH legal system will be comparable to that of countries like China, Gambia or Vietnam if the Legal Services Regulation Bill is passed unchanged, according to the director of the International Bar Association (IBA), the international representative body for lawyers.
The association was prepared to consider convening a high-profile fact-finding mission to visit Ireland and examine whether the legal profession was under attack, Dr Mark Ellis said.
He was in Dublin yesterday, along with the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Bill Robinson, and incoming president of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, Marcella Prunbauer-Glaser, to speak at a seminar on the independence of the legal profession.
All three warned independence will be compromised if the proposed Bill, published in October, is enacted as it stands. This will place Ireland outside the norms of developed democratic states, they said.
Dr Ellis described the Bill as one of the most extensive and far-reaching attempts in the world by an executive to control the legal profession. The only other countries to have in place similar measures were the likes of China, Gambia and Vietnam, he said.
“The IBA tends to focus its attention on developing countries. In my 11 years in the IBA, I never remember something like this coming from a democratic and developed country. Lawyers must function without external interference. This is indispensable to the administration of justice and the rule of law.”
He pointed to the UN’s Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which state lawyers should be entitled to form self-governing professional associations to represent their interests, promote their continuing education and training, and protect their professional integrity. Under the proposed Bill these functions would be taken over by a body dominated by Government nominees, he said.
“The IBA is holding its international meeting here in October next,” he said. “It would be unfortunate if we were bringing this major event to a country that was struggling with the independence of the profession.”
Ms Prunbauer-Glaser said the council of bars was deeply concerned about the “unprecedented encroachment on the independence of the bar”, and had prepared a paper on the Bill. It had also asked EU commissioner for justice Viviane Reding to raise the matter with EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, who is responsible for the troika.
She said the proposals not only contravened the UN’s basic principles but also the Council of Europe’s recommendations on the freedom of lawyers, and a resolution of the European Parliament on the legal profession.
“This is important, not because of lawyers, but because of clients and society in general,” she said. “There are judgments of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights stating that the independence of the legal profession is correlated to the independence of the judiciary.”
Mr Robinson of the ABA said: “What is really at stake here for the people of Ireland is constitutional democracy. The public should be warned against allowing one man to anoint himself with virtually exclusive authority over the legal profession. History has taught us that the independence of the legal profession is the key to an independent judiciary, which is the key to freedom. What this Bill will do is compromise the fiduciary relationship between the lawyer and his or her client.”
The new body for regulating the legal profession will not be independent of the Government, and the removal of one of its members would be difficult to judicially review, according to Mr Justice Ronan Keane. The former chief justice told the conference: “It is not enough to say it is independent. You must ensure that by the method of appointment, the level of remuneration and the method of dismissal.”
He said the basis for the Government removing a member of the authority was so vague it was impossible to see how a court could exercise its judicial-review power if such a removal was challenged.