A SOLICITOR who is resisting a High Court application by the Law Society to have his accounts frozen because more than €1 million is allegedly missing from his client account has been given more time to raise funds to meet the alleged deficit.
The solicitor cannot be named but may be identified at a future date if he fails to show he has secured approval for loans to meet the deficit when the case comes back before the High Court on Monday.
On Thursday, the Law Society applied to the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Richard Johnson, for an order freezing the solicitor's accounts but the matter was adjourned to yesterday to give him an opportunity to raise funds.
Yesterday, Paul Anthony McDermott, for the society, said the position "remained the same" as on Thursday but the solicitor's representative wanted an opportunity to address the court as to how the money might be raised.
Mr Justice Johnson ordered that the submission from the solicitor's lawyer should be heard in private and the media was excluded.
On Thursday, the court was told the proceedings did not involve a "Lynn/Byrne-type situation" - a reference to missing solicitor Michael Lynn and solicitor Thomas Byrne who owe tens of millions of euro to financial institutions and are under Garda investigation.
However, the sum of money involved was "significant", Mr McDermott said on that occasion, and he asked that the proceedings not be heard "behind closed doors".
He said that the solicitor involved had been given a number of opportunities in the last month to "plug the hole" in the client account but despite this it did not appear the hole was going to be plugged.
The solicitor's lawyer, Sean Sexton, disagreed with that submission and said approval for one loan of €600,000 was already in place while arrangements were being made to get a further loan for €1 million.
Asking for the proceedings to be heard in private, Mr Sexton said he believed that, if they were held in public, it would frustrate efforts to secure the second loan.
Mr Justice Johnson allowed the press to remain in court to take notes of the proceedings but said they would remain in private unless the loan approval was not put in place.
The judge also remarked there was "a lot of public disquiet" which needed to be "shored up" for both the sake of the society and the legal profession itself.