The replacement of the existing daily rate for lawyers working in tribunals with an annual salary has received a mixed welcome from the two branches of the profession.
It has been welcomed enthusiastically by the Law Society, but received more sceptically by the Bar Council.
The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, announced yesterday that from September next senior counsel working for newly-established tribunals will be paid €213,098 a year, the same as a High Court judge, but including 15 per cent in lieu of pension contributions.
This rate will apply both to those working for the tribunals and representing third parties. Third-party costs have accounted for two-thirds of the costs of completed tribunals.
The payment rates for junior counsel will be two-thirds of the senior rate, or €142,065 annually.
A solicitor working for a tribunal will be paid €176,000.
Mr McCreevy pointed out that this is about 40 per cent of the current maximum rates of pay, which run to €2,500 a day for senior counsel, with pro-rata rates for junior counsel.
He said that the rates would apply to those working in existing tribunals, but the date for this coming into effect will follow communications between the Attorney General and the chairmen of the tribunals in question.
This raises the prospect of those working in the current tribunals having their income more than halved, and is likely to prove contentious.
Some barristers may not wish to continue working in the tribunals for the new rates of pay, raising the prospect of disruption as new barristers are found.
Already there have been some changes of legal personnel in certain tribunals, notably when Mr Pat Hanratty SC resigned from the Flood tribunal and Mr Eamon Leahy SC died suddenly during the Morris tribunal.
However, according to legal sources the nature of the relationship between barrister and client is not a contractual one, and that barristers cannot sue for their fees.
It is, therefore, legally open to the State to change the basis on which it is buying the services of barristers. It is also open to barristers to decline to accept the work on this basis.
"It is a market-driven situation," said Mr Conor Maguire SC, chairman of the Bar Council.
"Clearly the client is entitled to say he is changing the basis on which he is buying our services. But he may not get what he wants."
Stressing that the Bar Council had no role in relation to fees, he pointed out that what people were being paid at the moment had been agreed with the Attorney General and sanctioned by the Department of Finance, yet barristers were being blamed for the level of fees.
He said it was not appropriate to compare barristers' fees to the salary of High Court judges, who usually chair the tribunals.
"They are employed on an entirely different basis. Barristers have offices, staff, insurance, etc. Practices are built up, relationships are developed with solicitors.
"All that is put on hold when you go into a tribunal. You have to build up your practice again when you come out of a tribunal."
The director general of the Law Society, Mr Ken Murphy, warmly welcomed the new rates, reiterating his claim that the tribunals were "the greatest disaster to befall the legal profession in Ireland".
"A handful of lawyers have made a great deal of money but the whole profession has paid the price in public cynicism and false impressions about what average lawyers' earnings are," he said.
He pointed out that the Law Reform Commission report on tribunals, published last year, had criticised the retention of counsel, often for periods of years, on the basis of a daily fee as would apply in a court case.
"The commission noted that counsels' income depends upon an aggregate of 'sunny days' (when he is paid) and 'rainy days' (when he is not)," he said.
"Against this background, tribunals of inquiry offer the climatologically-impossible scenarios of, often, three or four years of continuous sunny days."