467 / 736
loss.
The delay in completing professional business
may be due to unavoidable circumstances affecting
the client or the complexity of difficulty of the
business.
Government
Departments,
where
business log-jams are becoming more serious from
year to year are a large contributory factor in
delay. Lastly, the solicitor himself may be in
efficient and if he is he cannot complain. Never
theless the one certain act is that delays do occur
and that they are in a very large measure due to
circumstances which are beyond the control of the
solicitor or the client. Examples of delay at the
present time in Government Departments are the
Land Registry where
transactions may
take
twelve months or more
to complete and
the
Estate Duty Office which is seriously understaffed
with resulting arrears and delay. This suggests the
following considerations:
1.
Long term credit is becoming less and less
acceptable in commercial transactions and
business generally.
2.
Solicitors in preparing bills of costs where
there has been no unreasonable delay on
their part should be entitled to take into
consideration the change in the value of
money and the loss of interest on the fees
for work carried out for a long time previous
to payment.
3.
Changes of this kind cannot be effective
without authority
from
the
rule-making
bodies but it would be reasonable in con
nection with negotiations over cost that
these considerations should be taken into
account.
ERIC A. PLUNKETT
N.I.E.C. URGES POLICY FOR
ALL INCOMES
Proposals to be implemented by
employer-worker body
A plan for a prices and incomes policy proposed
by
the National
Industrial Economic Council
depends on voluntary co-operation by the Govern
ment,
employers
and workers. No
statutary
controls are proposed.
The council's
report
is welcomed
by
the
Government and approved by the executive coun
cil of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. An
employer-employee body and a prices and incomes
committee are to be set up very soon to implement
it.
The policy would cover all incomes—farmers'
incomes, professional earnings, rents, profits and
realised capital gains, as well as wages and
salaries—and arrange surveillance to see that price
increases would be limited to the justified mini
mum.
One of its objectives would be to improve the
position of lower-paid workers, including, pre
sumably, the great majority of women workers.
A basic objective is to curb inflation.
The
N.I.E.C. stated bluntly and unanimously that if
inflation was not curbed, even the existing level
of employment could not be maintained and that
it was utterly unrealistic to aspire towards full
employment. It warned that we would be faced
with serious social tension and unrest.
General guide-lines
for increases
in money
incomes are to be given by the N.I.E.C. and
criteria are to be laid down for divergences from
them. The new employer-employee body would
translate them into practical negotiating terms.
The Government has invited the I.C.T.U. and
the Irish Employers' Confederation to join with
it in a statement of commitment to the principles
of the report and to discuss the immediate estab
lishment of the new body. It will strengthen the
Labour Court, the prices section of the Depart
ment of Industry and Commerce and the Fair
Trade Commission. All three and the Departments
of Finance and Labour are to be represented on
the incomes and prices committee, and there are
to be six non-official members appointed by the
Government.
Government statement
A statement for the Government Information
Bureau said that there was now a wider recognition
that income increases on the scale secured during
the current national round of increases had raised
serious social and economic problems for the
community.
It was essential that the economy be given time
to absorb those settlements and that arrangements
be made to ensure that future increases did not
endanger the national economy.
The changes
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