MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter has denied that his proposed Legal Services Regulation Bill will prevent adjudications on costs in family law proceedings from being published.
Mr Shatter told The Irish Timesthat measures to deal with disputed costs in a proposed Bill will include those relating to family law, but only in a manner that will not permit the parties to be identified.
Mr Shatter’s law firm, from which he stepped down prior to becoming a Minister, is one of the largest in the State specialising in family law and has been involved in a number of disputes with clients concerning costs.
The regulation Bill contains a number of sections dealing with the establishment of an office of legal costs adjudicator.
Section 82.3 says that “determinations of the legal costs adjudicator, containing the outcomes of disputes and the reasons for the decision, will be published, unless the dispute concerns proceedings heard otherwise than in public, or proceedings that, had they gone to a hearing would have been heard otherwise than in public.”
All family law cases and certain cases containing sensitive commercial information are heard in private. This subsection, therefore, appears to prevent the publication of determinations in family law cases.
However, section 82.4, which follows immediately, appears to contradict this, stating “notwithstanding [that] subsection . . . the legal costs adjudicator shall cause to be published the outcome of and the reasons for the determination . . . in such a manner that the parties concerned, or the client, cannot be identified whether by name, address or economic activity”.
When this issue first arose, Mr Shatter said the Bill, if passed, would not prevent the publication of determinations involving family law cases, including the name of the firms concerned.