228 / 336
who are acting in accordance with the law. They may
be bending the law. They may be very clever and may
have advisers who are very clever assisting them in
doing this but, because what they are doing is reprehen-
sible and, in the Minister's view is the equivalent of
breaking the law, he is advising the doctrine that every-
body has the obligation to get after these people irre-
spective of what that costs in the way of citizens'
rights, in the way of the loss of the privilege attaching
to the relationship between solicitor and client built up
over centuries for the protection of the individual and
the citizen.
The Minister could not have thought out the implica-
tions of what he is saying or he would not have said
what he did. I want to suggest again that the informa-
tion, in the case of solicitors, which may be obtained
under this section is that available otherwise to the
Revenue Commissioners. The actual information being
obtained from solicitors under this is virtually useless to
the Revenue Commissioners. The point is, if one can
justify this encroachment on the grounds put forward
by the Minister, then one can justify much greater
encroachments. The Minister cannot even justify it on
the grounds of the necessity to obtain this information.
Before the Revenue Commissioners would even seek
to obtain such information from a particular solicitor
they would have to have a particular client in mind
about whose activities they wanted information. If they
have that, they are going to get no information from the
solicitor that is not available to them in other ways.
Yet, we have this serious encroachment, serious in its
implications, being built into this section for purposes
totally ineffective so far as the Revenue Commissioners
are concerned. In my view it is completely unjustified.
Mr. O'Malley: I want to support this amendment
and what Deputy Colley has said. This amendment,
in substance, is almost precisely the amendment which
he and I had down to the Finance Bill last year, which
in fact was never discussed by the House or taken be-
cause the whole second half of the Finance Bill was
guillotined through by the Government without any
discussion, coming up to the end of July, after there
had been an abnormal delay in the publication of the
Bill. It illustrates the danger of not discussing Bills of
this nature adequately in the House because that sec-
tion we sought to amend last year got through. Unfor-
tunately this is a Committee Stage of a particularly
complicated Finance Bill. It creates no public interest.
There are probably one or two pressmen here.
It was recognised for centuries in the Common Law
that there were certain people to whom ordinary citizens
could go for advice and could open up their hearts
about their problems and troubles. The ordinary citizen
had confidence that, come what may, whatever he said
to his solicitor, barrister, confessor, doctor or anyone
else in that position, that confidence would never be
broken.
Under a statute of the Oireachtas brought in last year
by the Minister for Finance, that confidence and trust
can no longer be regarded as being in accordance with
the law. If a solicitor, accountant or barrister does not
disclose what was told to him privately on a totally
privileged and confidential basis by his client, he will
break the law. Deputy Colley validly pointed out that
this is simply a matter which is sought to be remedied
in the eyes of the Minister by section 59 of the Finance
Act, 1974. This is simply a matter of tax avoidance. It
is regarded by the Minister as so serious from the point
of the view of the State that he is prepared to force
this House to legislate against the retention of that
confidential and privileged relationship.
If the State feels entitled to legislate away this
confidentiality and privileged relationship in relation to
a comparatively trivial thing like tax avoidance,
a for-
tiori
is not the State entitled to legislate it away in more
important things, such as the crime of murder? If the
police force have reason to suspect a certain individual
of having committed a very serious crime, watches him,
sees him approach a priest of his religion and discuss
privately with the priest some matter, whether in the
confessional or a situation that would be akin to it, is
there not, on the basis of the Minister's argument, a
greater justification for the police being given power to
compel that priest to disclose what was said to him
than there, is under section 59 to compel a solicitor to
disclose information because the Revenue Commis-
sioners suspect tax avoidance on the part of his client?
Murder is a far more serious matter than tax avoid-
ance.
Can any doctor feel sure that if this Government
forced through section 59 of the Finance Act, 1974,
that the Minister for Health will not bring in com-
parable legislation to compel doctors to disclose certain
facts which should be confidential between the patient
and the doctor? Is there any relationship left, after this
principle is established, that can be regarded as safe, as
sacred or as privileged? The whole doctrine of a Com-
mon Law through the centuries preserved, often at great
cost, the sanctity of a privileged relationship. Sec-
tion 59 of the 1974 Act destroyed that and for the
most trivial of reasons.
I can only remind the Minister that when he
sat on this side of the House we had long tirades
from him about the protection of human rights,
not alone in Ireland but in obscure countries all round
the world. To the extent that he is in a position to do
things and control matters, can he find nothing better
to do but to destroy, at the request of the Revenue
Commissioners, a privileged, deeply confidential rela-
tionship between solicitors and their clients? Let him
remember this : he is not doing any great harm to solici-
tors. All they have to do to comply with the law is to
tell the Revenue Commissioners. The people being
harmed are their clients and they are not all rich men.
Every client of every solicitor is potentially at risk now
and not necessarily in relation to tax avoidance.
[Note: The final Part III of this debate will be pub-
lished in the October Gazette.]
222