THE COMMISSION for Public Service Appointments has found that the Attorney General’s office is wrong to restrict posts as advisory counsel grade III to barristers, and has recommended they be opened to solicitors as well.
This follows a complaint from the Law Society that confining the positions to barristers was unfair, restrictive and contrary to the public interest. According to the Attorney General’s office website, “to be eligible for appointment to a position of advisory counsel, a person must have been called to the Bar and have significant post-qualification experience”.
The office had argued to the commission that as advisory counsel assisted the Attorney General in providing advice to the Government, this included knowledge of how litigation might best be conducted to the State’s advantage and expert advice with regard to the likely outcome of litigation, skills acquired by barristers.
The commission accepted the benefits of having candidates available to it with those skills, but added: “We are satisfied that the public interest is best served by opening advisory counsel grade III posts to solicitors and barristers alike and allowing those involved in appointing candidates to select the best candidates [in a] transparent, merit-based, competitive process.”
It said the public interest was best served by recruiting from the widest pool of relevant and available talent and experience. The position carries a salary of between €74,644 and €95,922.
The decision was welcomed by the director general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, who said: “Solicitors have served as judges of the Circuit Court since 1996 and judges of the High Court since 2002. In the light of this, most members of the public would have been amazed to learn that solicitors were still excluded from consideration for appointment as advisory counsel grade three in the Attorney General’s office.”