I picked law because around the time I was in secondary school there was a lot of discussion about high profile cases in the UK like the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four

From Belmullet to the Inner Bar, Paul McGarry’s rise to the top of his profession did not happen overnight. The Mayo man now heads the Bar of Ireland and, as its chairman, he is in charge of representing over 2,200 barristers during his two year tenure. Fellow Mayo man and Parchment editor John Geary caught up with the busy Senior Counsel

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The Helmsman

Imeet Paul McGarry at his office in the Distillery Building. Brief upon brief stretch across his boardroom table, as he clears the way for our discussion. There are also multiple boxes of briefs

that appear to have just arrived for his attention. Despite being surrounded by this chaos of paperwork, he is calm, welcoming and keen to talk to the Parchment.

After a ‘five-year package holiday’ in Boarding School at Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, the young McGarry had picked up an early interest in the law. Despite there being no lawyer in his family or any legal background, he set himself out on the road to law.

“When I was in school I was interested in current affairs generally and history, English and Latin. I picked law because around the

time I was in secondary school there was a lot of discussion about high profile cases in the UK like the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four. These type of cases were in the news an awful lot around that time and there were a lot of books published about them so it was a topic that I was interested in.”

He went to UCD, read law and secured his BCL. Not content with just an honours degree, Paul went on to study for an LLM in UCD in European Law. His next step was an interesting one. “I went and worked in Brussels for four years with the European Commission as an official. It was absorbing, despite the civil service bureaucracy. I worked in a policy/administrative role and it was very engaging. I was involved in environment and consumer law as well as competition law.”

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Cross ExaminationJohn Geary is Principal of J.V. Geary Solicitors, Castlebar and Dublin. He is editor of the Parchment

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But the lure of the ‘auld sod’ was always there and after his four-year stint in Brussels, Paul was intent on coming home. I was curious to know what tipped him in favour of the barrister route. He admits to having been a debater in school and university and liked making his point in an argument. “I saw myself as an advocate. Also, I knew people who were at the Bar and I was encouraged by their feedback. I had a preference for being self-employed.”

He describes attending the Kings Inns on a two-year course, part time and he came under the tutelage of barrister Paddy Hunt. “Paddy was a very well known tax barrister. I landed on my feet with Paddy who was a really fantastic master. He is sadly deceased now.”

Paul then explains that because of his experience of working in Brussels, he ended up getting asked to do quite a lot of work in the area of European Law and Competition Law. “Twenty years ago there were less people practising in that area of law in Ireland and so it quite a niche area. I ended up doing numerous cases over the years in the Courts of Justice in Luxemburg.”

The Mayo man has a good command of French and has conversational Spanish, which was a help when in Europe. He tells of his involvement in the Council of European Bars and that he was head of the Irish delegation two years ago.

Nowadays, McGarry has built a diverse practice – still concentrating on European and Commercial Law – but also Chancery and Judicial Review. He confesses to not having any great interest in crime. “I did one murder trial once which was I found horrible, quite scary.”

I ask him to comment on the new CCJ; the complete and utter divide with the Four Courts; and the difficulties for barristers who had a mixed practice of civil and criminal. Effectively, barristers have to practice either one or the other given the location of the two court buildings. “It is one of the big regrets I think at the Bar that we have the CCJ built where it is. In essence there has been a division now between those who practice and it was possible for people to do both, practice in criminal law and civil law

and interchange which was a good thing but now the reality is, you must do one or the other. We lost something as a result of that. I think the Four Courts has lost something too. I mean even if you walk in to the Law Library, or even the Courts area themselves and the Round Hall - there is nowhere near the same level of activity as there would have been before the CCJ opened up and it’s a bit of a shame because at the Bar, we rely on the colleague structure.”

Bar Council We discuss Paul’s early involvement with the Bar Council and he tells me that he was on Council for a few years as a junior counsel and chaired a number of committees such as the Junior Library Committee (now known as the Policy and Public Affairs Committee). “The late Rory Brady asked me to get involved when I was quite junior. There wasn’t a lot of junior representation at the time and Rory got me on board.” Paul took silk in 2010 and recounts what a special day that was for him and his family.

I ask Paul why did they change the name from the Bar Council to the Bar of Ireland? He says that the names are still used interchangeably. “We hired a new Director/CEO in the last couple of years and we’ve put in place a new team of people who are very modern and dynamic. We tried to change the ethos of the organisation from being one which is reacting to issues from time to time to being one that provides services directly to the members in a more modern and efficient way. We did some research and surveys into how best to market the profession and we decided we would change the name. It’s not a big thing.”

We discuss the process of becoming Chair of the Bar of Ireland and I enquire is it based on seniority? “No we have a very competitive electoral college system whereby the Bar elects, members of the Council as the chair. There are 20 votes every year and there hasn’t always been an election but there has been elections many years and some of them can be fairly close. I was vice-chair for the year immediately before I became chairman but again it’s not an automatic progression

like you have in other organisations where you can tell a number of years out who is going to be in the chair.”

It is noteworthy that McGarry saw off Sarah Moorhead SC and Seamus Woulfe SC, now the Attorney General, in his bid to get elected as chair. He now represents the 2,200 members of the Bar which include 300 senior counsel and some 1,900 junior counsel.

How does a busy senior, who is married to Olga (they have two sons aged eight and ten), find time to run a busy practice and also be chairman of the Bar? “There are a lot of events that you are required to go to and there are numerous weekly meetings. Obviously you need to be careful that you don’t completely throw your practice away. I’d say in my case maybe 40% of my week is spent with Bar Council business but there are some weeks when it is a lot more than that.”

The gig is for two years and McGarry is just past the halfway point. He says the two-year chairmanship is a good idea as it takes a few months to get up to speed on all the issues. “There is an awful lot going on at the moment between Legal Services Regulation, judicial appointments, you know ongoing issues that we have with the various state bodies who retain the services of barristers, relations with the Law Society which are very very good. We have a huge amount of work to do in a wide variety of other areas like Brexit and the international sphere and all the time trying to meet the demands of members.

“One of the things we tried to do this year was to improve the interaction between Council and by that I mean the administration of the organisation and members on circuit for example. They’ve been a little bit left behind by the changes that we have introduced in Dublin and we are also trying to obviously improve facilities for members all the time. We have a huge amount of work done on IT for members in the run up to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 so we have invested a considerable amount of money in providing facilities for members. We want to ensure that our members are data protection compliant.”

In addition to that, the chairman has got out to meet members around the country with a recent visit to Cork, and Galway and Kilkenny earlier this year. He stresses the importance of ‘pressing the flesh’ and listening to barrister members across the country and what is happening on the ground.

Legal AidThe slashing of legal aid fees during the recession was a difficult pill for practitioners to swallow. Now that the economy is

We tried to change the ethos of the organisation from being one which is reacting to issues from time to time to being one that provides services directly to the members in a more modern and efficient way

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Cross Examination

professions closer together so that it would make it easier for them to fuse. There is a four-year consultation period in relation fusion and other issues but it doesn’t seem as though there is any appetite for a marriage of the two professions. I don’t think there is a huge demand for it.”

Judicial AppointmentsAs we wrap up our interview, it would be remiss if I did not ask Paul about the hot potato that is the judicial appointment process.

“I think there is still way too much flexibility given to the government, who have the actual final decision. The problem is for example, there is now ranking of recommendations from the Judicial Advisory Appointments Board. They are supposed to recommend seven names per position although they don’t always do that. The problem with the “Shane Ross Bill” is that it doesn’t take away the government’s absolute discretion to avoid the recommendations. The government can still do what it wants. It does reduce the numbers to three and allows them to be ranked and interviewed and so on but we have major concerns with it. We disagree with the Law Society on the massive problem with the lay majority and the Chief Justice not being the chair. I think more fundamentally, judges tend to have a better idea about what is required to be a judge than anyone else.”

At 47, Paul McGarry is a man ticking all the boxes and in command of his brief. His political nous, legal insight and managerial skills make this man one to watch for the future. P

somewhat back to itself, is the Bar of Ireland doing anything to address this issue so that colleagues are properly paid for their work? “We have been talking to the various government departments and the people who are involved – the Legal Aid Board and the Attorney General’s Office but more importantly Department of Public Enterprise and Department of Justice about this. I suppose one of the problems with that is that you rely, I think initially, on the DPP to drive it because of the parity rule in relation to fees on legal aid on the criminal side. If the DPP is minded to increase the fees that are available for solicitors or counsel mainly as they instruct Counsel you will then see the Legal Aid Board on the other side will do it. And we are talking to them about that because some of the cuts have been 30/40% so it’s on the agenda. They have recently introduced a new range of fees which weren’t there before for the Court of Appeal Criminal side which is good and we are now hopefully getting to a stage with the Department of Public Enterprise and Reform where they are going to restore. There was an 8% and a 10% cut which we thought was way over the top on the back of 10/20% cuts that had already been imposed. We are hoping that we can get those back some time in the next six months to a year.”

Burning IssueI am curious to know if there is one burning issue for barristers at this time and I ask the helmsman what that might be. “I’m not sure there is one burning issue because there are lots, depending on the barrister. They all have different concerns. I think one of the big concerns I have is that junior members are finding it much harder now to get going so we are losing more people now than we would have 20 years ago and it is partly due to the state of the economy as a whole. We have lost a considerable number of barristers. I don’t have the exact figures, but we were up around 2,500 at one point. We are now down under 2,200.”

He acknowledges that some junior barristers have left to convert over to being solicitors; others have gone to work ‘in house’ with companies or with large Dublin solicitor firms. But sadly others have left the Bar because they were simply unable to make ends meet.” If you think about it, barristers get instructed at the start of a case. I say this to students all the time. If you get instructed at the beginning of a certain case you might not get paid until well after the case is finished and litigation in Ireland is slow. Civil litigation can take 3 or 4 years and it’s not unusual if you add another six months or a year after that to get paid. It’s not hard to

see how it would take 5 or 6 years for you to get paid in that scenario.”

The FutureThe topic of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) inevitably comes up and Paul tells me that his predecessor, David Barniville is the Bar’s nominated member on the Board of the LSRA. I ask him does he see solicitors and barristers coming together, as envisaged in the legislation, as being a good idea or will the traditional approach prevail?

“I think the market in this country suits the current approach. We have done a lot of work to date. The Legal Services Regulatory Authority had to conduct a number of consultations from the 1st of October last year in relation to things like legal partnerships and multi-disciplinary practices. Both ourselves and the Law Society made submissions and we have seen some of the reports and the interim reports coming out of the Legal Services Regulatory Authority and it looks as though they have accepted the arguments. In fairness, the Law Society have been saying similar things to us. In a society and a market as small as this, to create new regulatory structures without first assessing whether there is any real demand for the types of business models they are talking about is a silly idea. It’s daft to spend a whole load of money creating a structure to regulate something and spending a lot of money on all of that when there is no evidence that anybody is actually going to be looking to use it. The original draft of the Legal Services Regulation Bill certainly had the ethos to push the

Photography: Bryan Meade

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