The Gazette 1975

15.4 The total amount spent in the purchase of books for the year ending 30th April, 1975, was £1,566.91, and in the purchase of periodicals was £307.47, making a total of £1,878.38. The total amount spent on binding was £310.28. The corresponding amounts last year were in respect of books, £1,665, periodicals, £202, and binding, £334. As it will become more difficult in the future owing to inflation for members to provide themselves with their own copies of law books, it will be essential for the Library to fulfil this need. 15.5 The publications of the European Communities, as already stated in last year's Report, tend to take up much shelf space, consisting of more than 20 large volumes per year. It has therefore been found necessary to shelve the Information Section of the Journal of the Com- munity on the ground floor, leaving the Legislation Section in the Library. The number of copies of students' textbooks has also had to be restricted, due to limited shelf space, but it is hoped that this will be remedied when the Library is ultimately transferred to Blackhall Place. in 1978. 15.6 The number of books borrowed was if anything above the average, being about 20 volumes per week, while more than 40 volumes per week were photocopied in term time. At all times the Director General was most helpful. 15.7 The Librarian attended the Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in Nottingham in September, and the Workshop on European Community Law, organised by the International Association of Law Librarians at Bergisch-Gladbach near Cologne, in August.

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Colum Gavan Duffy, Librarian and Editor of the Gazette

16.1 This Committee was brought into being in the Autumn of 1974 because of the con- sciousness of the Council that it was likely that Solicitors' costs would become the subject of an Enquiry instigated by the National Prices Commission and they felt that it was of tremendous importance to be ready to deal with such an Enquiry. Practically contemporaneously with the setting up of the Committee a suggestion was made by the Council to the Minister for Justice that he might under the Provisions of Section 6 of the Prices Amendment Act 1972 seek a transfer to himself of the functions of the Act in relation to legal costs and fees. This request was not, in fact, acceded to and the National Prices Commission appointed a Professor Dennis S. Lees to conduct an Enquiry. 16.2 By the terms of his letter of the 11th of August, 1975, to the National Prices Com- mission, Professor Lees set out suggested terms of reference which were subsequently approved by the Commission. 16.3 The Costs Committee were not entirely happy with the terms of reference as they stood and having discussed some of the points with Professor Lees proposed submitting a preliminary Memorandum to him on the terms. In the meantime,-however, Professor Lees had met not only the Costs Committee but members of the Council and Solicitors' Associations and individual Solicitors throughout a large part of the country and had written to the Bar Associa- tions in the terms of his letter of the 15th of September, 1975. The Committee formed the opinion that the nature and scope of the Enquiry would be sufficiently wide to enable them to put forward a case on the lines they had originally intended. 16.4 In discussing the matter with Professor Lees and in dealing with it themselves the Committee have taken the view that it is facts, figures and statistics, which can be supplied only by the profession itself, which will form the basis of any case they make. They are some- what disappointed with the reaction of the profession to the questionnaire sent out by Coopers & Lybrand. 16.5 Even prior to the formation of the Costs Committee the Council had been considering costs from various aspects for a considerable time and had taken the initiative with their Accountants, Messrs. Coopers & Lybrand, in considering the best possible form of survey of the profession with particular regard to its financial position and consequently the Costs Committee had had a certain amount of the ground work done for it in this regard. In addition the Council had caused some preliminary experiments to be done in the field of time costing and again the Costs Committee were saved a considerable amount of time in relation to this aspect of costs, although unfortunately due in the main to an absence of enthusiasm in the profession itself the experiments in time costing had not been widely adopted. No really useful result from such an exercise can be achieved in less than 12 months or so. . 2 4 9

COSTS COMMITTEE

Gerald J. Moloney, Chairman Denis J. Bergin Thomas Callan Laurence Cullen John J. Dockrell Dominic Kearns William D. McEvoy Robert Pierce John Rochford Raymond M. Walker

Gerald J. Moloney, Chairman