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The Gazette of the incorporated Law Society of Ireland
[December, 1939
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.
Organisation of Solicitors.
In
the
foregoing
remarks
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-