The Gazette 1936-40

[December, 1939

The Gazette of the incorporated Law Society of Ireland

Organisation of Solicitors.

provisions of the Housing (Building Facili ties) and Labourers' Acts. The fees are in the discretion of the Arbitrator. As this matter is at present the subject of corres pondence between your Council and the Local Government Department I do not propose at present to comment at length upon it further than to say that the position with regards to costs allowed by Arbitrators has for some time past been unsatisfactory and the subject of more than one complaint from members of the profession to your Council. The matter may possibly call for serious consideration in the near future. Hitherto it has been the settled practice that when compulsion was resorted to in the acquisition of property, the owner at least got every facility to put forward his case either against the acquisition altogether or for fair and reasonable compensation in the event of the property being acquired, and adequate costs were, in proper cases, awarded to the owner. This principle was, I need scarcely point out, well recognised in the Land Clauses Consolidation Acts. If the public are now to be deprived of this pro tection, and indirectly discouraged from obtaining legal aid at a vital stage in the proceedings, then a serious departure will have commenced from a hitherto well settled practice, established for the public protection, and property owners will be compelled to appear unaided or alternatively at their own expense before a tribunal with arbitrary powers of Acquisition and fixing of com pensation—a state of affairs which would have been unthinkable some few years ago. When the lavish expenditure of public monies in other directions in connection with building or improvement schemes as the case may be, is considered, the miserable fee awarded to Solicitors becomes all the more difficult to understand, and can only be construed as an attempt to shut them out altogether from these enquiries.

In I have en deavoured to put before you matters of current interest to your profession. In my judgment some, if not all of them, merit serious consideration, and I have left for final notice what appears to me the most serious matter of all. Leaving out of con sideration Solicitors practising in Northern Ireland, 794 out of 1,301 Solicitors are members of the Incorporated Law Society. At a time when it is not only desirable, but essential that the organisation of our pro fession should be at its highest pitch, less than 60% are members of the Society which looks after and endeavours, so far as is in its power, to safeguard the interests of the profession. Does the profession realise the dangerous implications of this position, and does it recognise that it is easily the worst organised body in this country, at a time when, not only in this, but in ever}' country, the necessity for organisation is so widely recognised and every section of the comm unity is or has taken active steps to combine for the protection of its interests? Every other day inroads are attempted by persons having no legal status, into work for which only the long and expensive training a Solicitor undergoes gives the necessary qualification. Furthermore, the general public are entitled, in the transaction either of legal or quasi legal business, to have such work carried out by the persons on whom the legislature confers the right to transact such work, which right is subject to a control and coupled with responsibilities to higher authorities which does not exist in any other profession, and certainly are non-existent in the case of unqualified laymen. I have already cited an instance of what may transpire to be an unsatisfactory attitude on the part of Officials acting under the authority of a Public Department. This is not the only instance that could be cited of Officials of that particular Department adopt- the foregoing remarks