It’s hard to imagine the folks at law firm Mason Hayes & Curran (MHC) imagined Jim O’Callaghan would speak out against the enriching of lawyers when they asked him to address their conference on dispute resolution this week.
That, though, was the basis on which the Minister for Justice said he is reluctant to provide for third party funding of legal actions in the Irish courts.
Mr O’Callaghan said he was aware the system of civil legal aid needs to be “broadened” as a lack of access to the resources required to take significant legal actions can currently be a big barrier to the administration of justice.
Third-party funding of cases of the sort increasingly seen in other jurisdictions is, he said, however, too often used to “enrich lawyers”, something they were well able to do themselves, he assured an audience made up almost exclusively of members of the legal profession, “by doing a good job getting a fair day’s pay”.
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The Minister said the Law Reform Commission is due to report on the issue before the end of this year and he would consider their findings, but he made it clear he is instinctively against the establishment of any system he said might allow access to justice to be “commodified”.
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Later, Rory Kirrane SC, an MHC partner, talked about the ongoing litigation in the UK over the 2015 collapse of the Mariana dam in Brazil. American funders, he said, put up €450 million to cover the cost of the action by more than 200,000 plaintiffs. It remains to be seen, though, how much money would be left for those impacted even if a $1.4 billion settlement offer in the case is substantially improved upon.
Emily Egan McGrath SC said some regulated third-party funding mechanism will likely be required if representative (class) actions of the type initiated by the Irish Council of Civil Liberties against Microsoft over its use of personal data are to be practical in Ireland, given the enormous costs involved.
She also suggested Ireland might be “dragged kicking and screaming” into providing for it by European Law.
Mr O’Callaghan may have his work cut out on the issue in the months ahead and he can be sure the lawyers will be watching closely.
