– Dan Buckley
(Irish Examiner Newspaper)
Lawyers will be obliged to advise their
clients to consider mediation to resolve legal disputes, under new legislation
outlined by Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald yesterday. The Mediation
Bill, being drafted by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel, requires
solicitors and barristers to advise parties to disputes to consider utilising
mediation as a means of resolving them.
Where court proceedings are launched, it will also oblige parties to
proceedings to confirm to the court that they have been advised of this process
and have considered using mediation as a means of resolving the dispute. “The
purpose of the bill is to promote mediation as a viable, effective and
efficient alternative to court proceedings thereby reducing legal costs,
speeding up the resolution of disputes and relieving the stress involved in
court proceedings,” said Ms Fitzgerald.
One of the country’s leading mediators yesterday gave a broad welcome to
the bill but said she feels it could have gone further by involving more
comprehensively other professionals like accountants and medical practitioners."It is wonderful to see coming into law a regime that deals with all the aspects
of mediation and links the necessity of giving advice to what happens in
court,” said solicitor Patricia Mallon, a partner with Eoin Daly Mallon in
Cork.
“It gives people a more credible option and means that mediation can
operate as a default mechanism, particularly in family law disputes, rather
than the current system where the adversarial models is the default.”
However, Ms Mallon, a collaborative law practitioner and specialist in
family law, said it should allow for the involvement of more disciplines.“I do
a lot of co-mediations, working with psychotherapists and other disciplines. All
conflict is a ball of legal, financial and emotional issues. If you address one
issue without the other two, it can lengthen the process and is not as
efficient as it could be.”
The bill is expected become law before next year’s general election,
although Ms Fitzgerald acknowledged that there was no exact timetable for that
to happen.“While it is not possible to give a specific date for publication of
the bill at this stage, I intend to proceed quickly with enactment of the bill
following its publication later this year,” she said.
Under the new law, parties in family law cases will be required to
attend an information session on mediation.Where court proceedings have
commenced, a judge will also be allowed to invite the parties to consider
mediation and suspend the case to facilitate the mediation process.
The minister made the announcement as she launched the 2014 report of
the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) which shows that queries about housing
rights increased by 82% last year compared with 2013. This increase, the
sharpest on any legal issue dealt with by Flac, followed an 83% increase in
calls on housing between 2012 and 2013.
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