This Bill is intended to achieve two main objects. The first is to enable fees to be collected by the Minister for External Affairs, both at home and abroad, for services rendered by his Department in Dublin and by the diplomatic and consular officers of Ireland in other countries in cases where, at present, no fees can be legally charged. Secondly, the Bill aims at enabling the Minister for External Affairs to waive, in cases where hardship might result, fees which he is at present awarded in certain cases by the laws, or the courts, of other countries and for the collection of which it is considered desirable to have the added sanction of Irish law. The first class of cases, namely, those where no fee has been hitherto charged, although a definite service, entailing official work and time, has been given to a member of the public, includes a number of matters which could not be dealt with appropriately under the Commissioners for Oaths (Diplomatic and Consular) Fees Act, 1931. That Act only permitted fees to be charged in respect of services of a purely "notarial" character, such as services involving the administering of oaths or the attestation of documents by Irish representatives abroad.
A service such as that performed by the home department when it prepares and legalises a statement of Irish law or custom for use in foreign courts, a document generally known as a certificat de coutume, cannot be charged for under existing legislation. A reasonable fee will be fixed for the issue of certificats de coutume under Section 2 of the present Bill as soon as it is passed and the necessary regulations framed.
The second class of case to which I have referred is associated with the distribution of the estates of persons dying in the United States of America, leaving Irish heirs. At the moment a large number of such estates are handled by our Consular officers in the United States, who, as a rule, are awarded by American Courts a 2½ per cent. commission or fee, on the net shares with the distribution of which they are entrusted. That fee, once legally awarded to an officer of the Department, becomes the property of the State, and there is no power in our law to waive it. Yet, there may be cases where the deduction of 2½ per cent. from a very small amount due to an Irish next-of-kin would mean very little to the exchequer and a great deal to the poor person entitled under the estate. Sub-section (3) of Section 2 will cover such a case.
The result of the Bill in regard to estate procedure will thus be to safeguard the interest of poor people who at present pay fees on the same scale as those who inherit large amounts. The Bill will not result in an increase on the present fee of 2½ per cent. in any estate case and where no moneys are distributed, notwithstanding the efforts of the Department of External Affairs, there will be no fee charged in estate cases. The Bill is, therefore, necessary to supplement the 1931 Act by creating certain new fees for existing services, and to regularise and ameliorate a situation where fees have been collected by virtue solely of a foreign law on a basis which in practice has not always appeared to be quite equitable.
