I move amendment No. 137:
In page 75, subsection (1), line 12, to delete "excludes" and substitute "requires".
This is purely a drafting amendment to clarify the provision.
SECTION 72.
Why are solicitors automatically entitled to be commissioners for oaths?
They are not.
But does that not allow them to be? Every solicitor who holds a practice certificate can, according to the section, be made a commissioner. Is that not so?
It does not automatically make them commissioners for oaths but enables them to exercise the powers which a commissioner for oaths has. The purpose of this provision is simply to facilitate the administration of justice. The power to appoint commissioners of oaths is vested in the Chief Justice under the provisions of section 73 of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Ireland), 1877. The present situation is that only solicitors who have been appointed as commissioners by the Chief Justice may exercise the powers of commissioners. Given the wide number of circumstances in which persons have to swear documents and have them witnessed I think it is useful to have a provision which gives solicitors the powers of commissioners for oaths. I should make it clear that section 72 does not make every solicitor a commissioner. It gives them the power of a commissioner but they could not style themselves a commissioner when exercising powers under this section.
Would you care to repeat that backwards?
It allows them to do legally what you have to go to a commissioner for oaths to do at the moment. But if you want to become a commissioner for oaths you still have to go through the procedures set down in the 1877 legislation.
Yes, but is that not why we are right to oppose this section?
Amendment agreed to.
Section 72, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 73 and 74 agreed to.