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5
Submission to Dail Éireann Select
Committee on Finance & General Affairs
on Section 153 Finance Bill, 1995
"History was made today when the Law Society became the first body to make its
submission to the Dail Committee on the Finance Bill
" - Evening Press,
10 May.
The following is the text of the Law
Society Submission:
We understand that this is the first
occasion on which a Dail Committee
has invited interested parties to attend
before it to make submissions in
relation to draft legislation. This is,
therefore, a significant event in the
history of the Oireachtas. It is an
honour for the Law Society to be the
first such interested party to be invited
to make a submission to a Dail
Committee and on behalf of the
Society we wish to thank you, Mr.
Chairman, and your Committee for the
invitation to address you.
The Minister for Finance in his
Second Stage speech indicated that
there were quite detailed discussions
with the accountancy bodies prior to
the measure under consideration today
being announced. We wish to place on
record that the Law Society was not
consulted in advance about section
153 of the Finance Bill, 1995. Nor
have we been afforded an opportunity
to make representations since its
publication, other than by writing to
the Minister. In those circumstances
this invitation is particularly welcome.
The Law Society was established by
Charter in 1888 and under Statute by
the Oireachtas in 1954, as
subsequently amended as recently as
1994. It is charged by the Oireachtas
with being the representative and
regulatory body for solicitors in
Ireland. The solicitors' profession has
a long and proud history of service to
the people of Ireland. Perhaps the
most important role that lawyers can
play is to stand between the State and
its citizens when the rights of the
latter are under threat. It is a role
which rarely endears lawyers to the
State but is one which the profession
has never shirked and which it will
not shirk on this occasion.
One of the most disturbing aspects of
section 153 is what we would term its
'slippery slope' dimension whereby
the undermining of certain
constitutional rights connected with
lawyer/client confidentiality, once
established, could be expanded on in
years to come. Although the current
proposal is confined to the tax affairs
of companies, if the principle were
established here, it is not difficult to
envisage it being extended to the tax
affairs of individuals and, indeed,
beyond tax matters to other matters of
issue between the individual and the
State. It is because of this that the
Society views section 153, as applied
to lawyers, as a civil liberties issue of
genuine significance.
Section 153 is a measure intended to
assist the State to curb tax evasion.
We wish to make it utterly clear at the
outset that the Society, and the
solicitors' profession whom we
represent, in no way, shape or form
condone tax evasion. We would
condemn without hesitation any
solicitor engaged, or assisting clients,
in relation to tax evasion. Apart from
the criminal penalties which such
activity would attract, to be so
engaged would be a matter of the most
serious professional misconduct for a
solicitor. It would be dealt with as
such with the utmost severity by the
Society and would be likely to lead to
the ultimate sanction of the solicitor
being struck off the Roll of Solicitors
by the President of the High Court.
There have been some suggestions
that the Society's opposition to
section 153 indicates an ambivalence
towards tax evasion and a desire to
protect clients who may be guilty of it
from being brought to justice. That is
most emphatically not the case. Any
such suggestion is a defamatory
misrepresentation of the Society's
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