Sir, – The Legal Services Regulation Bill has been almost four years in gestation.
Internationally the price of legal services is very high but even the troika looked askance at the cost of accessing legal services in this country and continually urged their overhaul and reduction.
While Alan Shatter was subjected to rigorous criticism, he did appear to be the first minister for justice who was prepared to get to grips with a serious financial problem that besets ordinary citizens in a personal capacity, should they require legal services, and collectively, through the expenditure of vast amounts of public funds on these services.
It would appear that a rearguard action of an entrenched vested interest has seen off the troika, no mean feat in itself, while other circumstances conspired to remove a motivated politician who had the temerity to seek value for money and reasonable expense in the legal arena.
Ordinary citizens as well as our economy are paying the price for this failure to secure even a modicum of reform in this area. – Yours, etc,
JOHN SULLIVAN,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.