A student in the Law Society's law school has been living in a transit van for five months in order to study there.
David (not his real name) is a mature student from Cork who passed the entrance exams to gain entry to the law school.
Training to become a solicitor requires six months in the Law Society's law school in Dublin, followed by a year's work in a solicitor's office as an apprentice, and then a further three months in the law school.
David obtained a solicitor's apprenticeship in Cork, which pays the stipulated wage of €260 a week. The total cost in fees is just under €10,000 and is frequently paid by the apprentice's master solicitor.
David was earning enough from his master to survive in Cork, but not in Dublin, where a room would have cost at least €500 a month before he paid any living expenses. So he borrowed a van, which he has converted to living accommodation. He parks it in a car park located, ironically, close to the Law Society, for €150 a month.
David declined to be named as he fears the consequences for his career if he is publicly identified.
He has fitted his van out with gas rings and a table that converts to a bed at night. He had no electricity for the first three months, but now has lighting. However, it was bitterly cold in the winter nights.
The Law Society's library closes at 6pm and at weekends, so he studies in the Ilac centre. He also travels back to Cork at weekends. Though the people running the car park are from the margins of society, he has nothing but praise for how they have treated him. "They look after me," he said. "Why am I here? I don't want to be here. I should be able to study to be a solicitor in Cork."
Because he was one of the last students taken on to the course, he was told he would not have a seat in the main lecture theatre, and asked if he was prepared to have lectures by video-link in the annexe. He agreed, because he did not want to defer his training for a year.
"Why can't they do a video-link to Cork? I have never seen the inside of a lecture hall. I have never seen a lecturer in the flesh.
"There are daily tutorials with 15 or 20 students, and there is personal contact there, but why is it not possible to have tutorials in Cork?"
The Law Society's effective monopoly on the training of solicitors in its Dublin-based school was heavily criticised in last week's Competition Authority report on legal services. David's solution might seem drastic, but others have come up with equally difficult ones.
According to a woman student, a number of married women travel daily to the law school from Cork and Clare, leaving their families in the early hours of the morning and travelling back at night.
The director general of the Law Society, Ken Murphy, said there was no need for anyone to live in a van. "The Law Society has a hardship fund and has bursaries. There is a community access programme. All students are paid while they are apprentices, and there are also student loans and local authority grants."
David is also critical of some of the contents of the Law Society course. "The first two weeks of the foundation course had someone from the Gaiety School of Acting training us on how to act like solicitors."
Mr Murphy said this sounded like a caricature of part of the advocacy course, which showed how body language could be as much part of advocacy as words. He said they regularly conducted student surveys, which showed a high level of satisfaction with the course.
Commenting on the Law Society's education monopoly, he said the society had already indicated it was willing to license other providers but no one had applied for such a licence. "All options are open and under active consideration," he said.