Some solicitors are facing disciplinary action from the Law Society arising out of advertisements they placed seeking abuse victims as clients, The Irish Times has learned.
Ken Murphy, the director general of the Law Society, said: "Some advertisements have been noted by the Law Society and investigated. Some have been found proper and others have been found in breach of the solicitors' advertising regulations and have been referred to the solicitors disciplinary tribunal."
It follows an extensive investigation by the society into allegations of double charging of abuse victims seeking compensation from the Residential Institutions Redress Board. The number of complaints received by the society so far is now 125, relating to 60 firms.
Mr Murphy said 46 firms of solicitors had already been invited to attend meetings of the complaints committee of the Law Society within the next few days and to bring all files and documentation with them.
Six special meetings of the committee, a third of whose members are laypeople, were being organised to deal with these complaints.
He added that the impression formed by those on the switchboard of the Law Society's helpline was that many of the complaints related to additional charges that could turn out to be legitimate.
The best example was where medical reports were required to move the claim forward. The redress board only allowed €400 for such reports, but in Britain it was common for psychiatrists or psychologists to charge £1,500 or £2,000 for them, which had to be paid up front by the solicitors. Such charges were passed on to the client.
Christine Buckley of the Aisling centre in Dublin yesterday called on the redress board to tell people what precisely it was prepared to pay where medical expenses were concerned. As it stood, she said, former residents of the institutions were experiencing further abuse at the hands of the board where the scale of compensation awarded was comparatively low.
A number were being double-charged by some solicitors and now were also expected to pay for medical examinations deemed necessary to determine the effects of their abuse.