Disputes with professions should not end up in courts - McDowell

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell has warned against using the courts to settle all disciplinary actions against professional people such as architects, doctors and lawyers.

The Tánaiste was speaking at a conference to discuss the regulation of professional bodies. Nearly all of Ireland's more than 30 professional bodies have either been the subject of recent legislation or will shortly be the subject of new legislation to allow for independent regulation and discipline of members.

The "judicialising" of all disciplinary procedures could make the regulation of professional bodies unworkable, he said.

"We have to ask ourselves whether it is tenable in future to have a court-based mechanism for every case of exclusion . . . Perhaps now is the time to step back and look at the situation."

However, he said, while many professions had well-established self-regulation, independent statutory regulation of the professions was necessary. It would ensure not only that a sector's complaints mechanism was above suspicion, but that it was believed to be so by the public. This was particularly true in relation to the legal profession, he said.

"While on the whole, the self-regulating processes operate satisfactorily, there naturally remains the possibility that a person who makes a complaint against a lawyer may get a result from those processes that does not accord with his or her view on the matter."

In these cases, the aggrieved party may feel that the self-regulating process has favoured the professional over the complainant, he said. "This perception can arise simply because the process is self-regulatory, regardless of whether or not there has been an actual bias in a particular case."

The Civil Law Bill 2006 provides for a legal services ombudsman, who will oversee the handling of complaints against solicitors and barristers where they relate to inadequate services, excessive fees and misconduct.

Next year would see the publication of legislation to regulate estate agents and auctioneers, Mr McDowell said. The Property Services Regulatory Authority will also deal with the issue of estate management charges and management companies for apartments and housing estates.

Independent regulation of the fitness to practise of pharmacists, medical practitioners and the nursing professions would also follow shortly he said.

JP McDowell, whose firm McDowell Purcell Partnership organised the conference, said that there would be a "natural resistance" to statutory regulation from groups that had never been regulated before. However, he said in the long term it would raise the standard of professions and the confidence of the public in them.