The role of the legal profession in our society also needs to be examined, writes Paul Cullen.
Charlie McCreevy's proposal to cut the fees of tribunal lawyers is a welcome if long overdue proposal that hasn't a hope of succeeding. More to the point, it provides a clever means of killing off the tribunals, while ensuring that lawyers rather than the politicians take the blame.
Let us be clear about this - there is no possibility that barristers serving on the current tribunals will accept such a drastic cut in pay, not to mention the very public affront to their status involved. After all, how many of us would accept a 60 per cent cut in our wage packets with just a few months' notice? A possibility perhaps where bankruptcy threatened, but this isn't a scenario with which the Law Library has much familiarity.
The Minister for Finance must be well aware of this. Indeed, he didn't seem too keen himself on a loss of status or income arising from a Cabinet reshuffle in September, if the rumour mill is to be believed.
Some barristers will respond to the Minister's fiat by retiring, having made their millions from years of tribunal work. Others will walk back to the Law Library and attempt to build, or rebuild, their practice.
There may even be a brave few who - following a careful appraisal of their chances - will seek to contest the decision in the courts, where they may well get a respectful hearing.
Whatever paths individuals follow, the overall result will be the breaking up of the existing staffs of the tribunals, and the loss of their collective knowledge and experience. The resulting turmoil will make further delays inevitable and the terminations of investigations are a distinct possibility. This will suit many people who are under investigation.
Junior staff may well be found to take the positions of those who leave, but should we be paying people coming straight from King's Inns sums of up to €150,000 a year? In any case, how much respect would a tribunal staffed by twenty-somethings command in such a status-conscious profession?
Far better to recognise that corruption is not going to go away by setting up a body with a specific remit to deal with the problem. Lawyers would play a significant role in this body, along with gardaí, forensic accountants and others with relevant skills.
The announcement was Mr McCreevy's last major act before his move to the EU Commissionership in Brussels was revealed. As with the controversial decentralisation plans he has championed, he won't therefore have to worry about the practical details of implementation.
It's also something of a U-turn by the Minister and the Government. This administration established the present crop of tribunals, its Attorneys General agreed the current fee rates and the Minister and his Department sanctioned these rates. Indeed, it isn't so long ago that the Department of Finance sanctioned a fees hike for lawyers on the older tribunals who grew envious of the rates being paid to staff on the newer inquiries.
Now it's all very well announcing a popular, populist move on the morning when your corrupt former Cabinet colleague Ray Burke pleads penury in the face of legal bills of €10.5 million and his lawyers give us a new definition of the word "pensioner" (Burke is 60 and enjoys an Oireachtas pension of €41,000 a year).
It's altogether another matter to take on a privileged legal profession with anti-competitive practices, restricted entry, overtly political fault-lines and only limited external scrutiny.
The question of tribunal lawyers' fees is only part of a much bigger issue, namely, the role of the legal profession in our society.
The vast sums paid to lawyers appearing at our tribunals merely constitute the most visible part of this phenomenon. In many other ways, the cogs of the Law Library are liberally greased with taxpayers' money in a way that lacks transparency and accountability. I have no problem with two well-funded private companies hiring top-dollar briefs to sort out their differences; good luck to those lawyers who can get away with charging what I earn in a year for a week's work.
But it's a different matter when my taxpayer's money is being used to pay these hefty fees. Lawyers talk about "the market rate" as though the market were free and open and fair.
However, in many situations, the work could be done by someone else more cheaply or by fewer people, and no real price competition applies. Just about everybody involved in the process of awarding and deciding costs in the courts is a lawyer or former lawyer and the levels of outside supervision are derisory.
The Competition Authority is investigating the profession, but not with any alacrity. Two years ago it published an "interim report" on eight professions including law; we are now promised a "consultation paper" by the end of this year.
But journalists too have been soft on this issue, perhaps because we largely share similar interests and middle-class professional values and count many lawyers among our friends.
Where Mr McCreevy is right is when he points out that a senior counsel at one of the tribunals earns more in 3.5 days than an old age pensioner does in a year.
Cutting tribunal fees should be the start of a re-examination of the role of the legal profession in our society, not the end.