I can advise the Deputy that the total cost incurred by my Department for legal services from 1 January to 30 September 2012 is approximately €4,740,000. It is not possible to predict the expected total outlay for the remainder of 2012 as legal costs have still to be decided by the courts or submitted for payment.
As the Deputy is aware, a drive to reduce expenditure and increase efficiency across all government Departments is being led by my colleague Minister Brendan Howlin in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. The Government has decided to undertake a comprehensive review of the level of public spending on legal services, and the manner in which public bodies procure those services. This review covers both direct employment of solicitors, engaging solicitors or barristers for particular cases and other related items of expenditure that arise from time to time. The review is currently underway and is being led by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
The Legal Services Regulation Bill currently before the Oireachtas, makes provision, mainly in Part 9, for a new legal costs regime which will bring greater transparency to how legal costs are charged with greater balance between the interests of legal practitioners and those clients who avail of their services - including Government departments. The Bill also sets out, for the first time in legislation, a series of Legal Costs Principles. These are contained in Schedule 1 and enumerate the various matters that may be taken into account if disputed costs are submitted for adjudication. For the first time, these cost transparency measures will apply to barristers as well as to solicitors.
Under the Bill it will no longer be permissible to set fees as a specified percentage or proportion of damages payable to a client from contentious business. It will no longer be permissible to charge Junior Counsel fees as a specified percentage or proportion of Senior Counsel fees. Legal practitioners will now be obliged to provide more detailed information about legal costs from the outset of their dealings with clients. This will be in the form of a Notice which must be provided when a legal practitioner takes instructions. Among other things, it must disclose the costs involved, or, where this is not practicable, the basis upon which costs are to be calculated with a cooling-off period for consideration by the client. When there are any significant developments in a case which give rise to further costs the client must be duly updated and given the option of whether or not to proceed with the case in question.
The Bill also provides that a new Office of the Legal Costs Adjudicator will deal with disputes about legal costs – at present these are dealt with by the Office of the Taxing-Master. The new Office, headed by a Chief Legal Costs Adjudicator, will modernise the way disputed legal costs are adjudicated. The Office will be empowered to prepare Legal Costs Guidelines for the guidance of Legal Costs Adjudicators, legal practitioners and the public and these will be published. It will establish and maintain a Register of Determinations which will include the outcomes and reasons for its determinations about disputed legal costs and these will be made public.
I am confident that both the outcome of the comprehensive review of the level of public spending on legal service, currently underway in the Department of Expenditure and Reform, and the relevant provisions contained in the Legal Services Regulation Bill, will establish the general framework wherein legal services can be procured by the State at best value as well as the transparency required to facilitate the ongoing management and control of legal costs by my Department and, indeed, the State.
