For Mr John Costello the law is all about people. Rich people, poor people, elderly people, disabled people; in this solicitor's view everyone can benefit from the law. It's a question of first understanding their needs and then advancing their rights.

Author of a new best selling book Finance and Law in Retirement, campaigner for legal reform, pioneering lawyer and grandson of a taoiseach, Mr Costello is head of the private clients department of Eugene F. Collins firm of solicitors and is clearly happy with his chosen profession.

"I only act for personal clients, behind every company there are individuals and behind every individual there's a family and that's where I come in."

Mr Costello began his career a little under 20 years ago in McCann Fitzgerald in an area he went on to specialise in. "I started off quite by accident in the probate department, making wills and administering estates. I enjoyed that work because as well as being a lawyer I was a bit like a social worker and a mediator."

As a lawyer, Mr Costello emphasises that a will can be used as a tax-planning mechanism. In the vast majority of cases wills are used to reduce inheritance tax liability and to set up trusts for beneficiaries with special needs. The most important function of a will though, in Mr Costello's experience, is for parents to appoint guardians for their children.

There are added complications for those who own their own businesses. "In the absence of a will, the family business will be divided with two-thirds going to the spouse and one-third to the children. This is often bad for the business and does no service to the family," Mr Costello said.

He first developed an interest in older people through his activities with the St Vincent de Paul Society in school and used to visit old people in the local hospital.

"In my work I found more and more that there was very little information out there about all the problems that older persons and their families face. That was the reason for putting the book together and it was very difficult to get information on certain areas, particularly nursing homes."

Apart from worrying about how to choose a nursing home for a relative, Mr Costello discovered that the most difficult problem for people is funding.

In other countries equity-release plans exist whereby a commercial institution buys a person's house in return for an annuity for the rest of their life to help fund nursing-home care. Mr Costello has made similar arrangements privately between individuals but says usually everything is left to the last minute.

According to Mr Costello there should be some form of health insurance plan to cover the cost of nursing-home care and that would give many people peace of mind.

The issue will become more and more pertinent with an aging population in the future. There are 420,000 people over 65 in the Republic at present and 900,000 over 50.

Tax relief on private pensions has been of great benefit and encouraged more individuals to plan for their retirement, according to Mr Costello. But, s opinion but he believes private pension schemes may need to be made compulsory for those who can afford them to safeguard against disaster in the future.

Mr Costello also practices family law and sounds a note of warning about untried aspects of the divorce legislation. "In practice the legislation has worked well for most people. A great number of people are getting divorced by consent and it goes through the Circuit Court in two or three minutes."

However, Mr Costello explains, a major problem for parties is that there is no full and final settlement built in to divorce in the Republic. "It is possible years after a divorce, for one party to go back to court and look for a greater financial award.

"In theory one spouse can go back to court and look for a share of wealth acquired after the marriage had ended and above and beyond any earlier settlement," Mr Costello said.

After seeing both his grandfather and father in politics and as barristers, Mr Costello was fully certain he did not want to pursue either career. His father Mr Declan Costello was Attorney General and a TD for 26 years.

"I was put off both careers, both of which are extremely stressful. If your family is in politics you're put under a certain pressure to follow in their footsteps but I wanted to plough my own furrow.

"The main reason I chose to become a solicitor was that I saw the value of the law and how it could change people's lives. Also as a solicitor you build up a relationship with your clients which you don't as a barrister, and that was important to me."

Mr Costello acted for the family in the celebrated Ward of Court or Right to Die case of 1995 and he sees this as an example of a case which illustrates the value of his job.

"The legal profession gets a lot of criticism but one of its greatest strengths is its role in creating new laws in hundreds of cases for clients who had no rights beforehand."

Some of Mr Costello's job satisfaction comes from deploying his money-management skills. "Saving a wealthy client thousands of pounds in tax is very satisfying and that does happen," he says.

Mr Costello says a lot of his clients were delighted with the recent Finance Act under which inheritance tax was reduced from 40 to 20 per cent and each child can now inherit £300,000 pounds before tax. "I think families of any wealth can live with tax of 20 per cent."

Mr Costello has three young children aged nine, seven and five and if he has extra work to do he prefers to bring it home in the evenings so that he can spend time with them and work when they're in bed.

"My wife, Ita Gibney, has her own communications company and she enjoys her work enormously. Because we both have busy professional lives we try and spend and lot of time with the children in the evenings and at weekends. We have a mobile home in Brittas Bay and we go down there as much as possible.

"We're very lucky that we have a wonderful childminder who's been with us since the eldest was born. and we couldn't survive without her."

Mr Costello has played tennis doubles with the same three people every Wednesday night for 20 years. He's also a supporter of Coventry City since they had an Irish manager when he was in school.

His latest project is an effort to get a formal pro-bono scheme (voluntary legal help system) for solicitors up and running. He is founding chairman of the pro-bono committee in the Law Society. It is working on recommendations that an official solicitors' pro-bono scheme be set up.

"It could be cases where people can't get legal aid, such as environmental cases, employment appeals or social-welfare appeals," Mr Costello said.

"The way I see it is we're doing it anyway so why not make it work better and save people the trouble of looking for help on their own."