Sir, - As has been widely reported, the Minister for Justice, by way of regulation, intends to include solicitors within the money-laundering legislation as designated persons who must report any information they come across in dealing with their clients if they form a view that money laundering or drug trafficking has taken place.
Part IV of the Criminal Justice Act 1994 implements the EU Council Directive 91/308 requiring all member states to introduce legislation to ensure that money laundering or handling the proceeds of criminal activities is prohibited. The Dublin Solicitors Bar Association fully supports this concept but is most concerned about the implementing legislation itself.
It is our view that the legislation strikes at the heart of the solicitor/ client relationship and goes much further than what is required by the directive. The 1994 Act would quite correctly apply to a solicitor's knowledge of money-laundering arising from his day to day work on behalf of clients. However the legislation goes further and appears to extend the interpretation of the directive to include any "other criminal activity".
In effect, the DSBA believes that a solicitor may be held to have committed a criminal offence if he did not immediately report to the appropriate authority any view that a criminal offence of any description had occurred as a result of information which was given to him in confidence by the client.
On a strict interpretation of the legislation, if a solicitor is informed at the commencement of a consultation with a client that the client has parked at a meter which has expired then the solicitor may have an obligation to immediately telephone the Garda and notify it of this.
If, in the course of a consultation with a client in relation to a family law matter, a solicitor becomes aware of the possibility of certain revenue or social welfare offences having been committed in the distant past, is it reasonable to expect the solicitor to immediately inform the appropriate authorities of the possibility of such activities having taken place? The Dublin Solicitors Bar Association strongly urges the Minister for Justice to reconsider this matter and either exclude solicitors altogether from the Act or amend the legislation to ensure that it deals only with those areas referred to in the EU directive.
If this is not done, the consequences could include an entirely unacceptable extension of the State's intrusion into the lives of each individual. - Yours, etc., Ruadhan Killeen,
Solicitor, President, Dublin Solicitors Bar Association, Mountjoy Square, Dublin 1.