Irish Examiner view: Attorney General delivers remarkable opinion

The Attorney General’s office said that the State’s legal strategy towards citizens who were charged nursing home fees was 'sound, accurate, and appropriate'. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

We learned this week from the Attorney General’s office that the State’s legal strategy towards citizens who were charged nursing home fees was “sound, accurate, and appropriate” .

Readers will be familiar with the backstory to this report —the allegations that successive governments have for years devised and applied a strategy to deny refunds to people who were “illegally charged” nursing home fees, sought to contest associated cases, and only settled when people proceeded with their legal actions.

The opinion delivered by Attorney General Rossa Fanning on the State’s legal strategy seems remarkable enough as an endorsement of the steps pursued. 

An accompanying comment from the Attorney General, that the public interest is the only interest that the State can have regard to, is even more remarkable.

That seems an out-and-out contradiction given the situation thousands of members of the public found themselves in as a result of this strategy. 

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An obvious question to ask is what specific public interests were served by the behaviour of successive governments on this issue.

It’s a frequent criticism of the legal system that it exists to perpetuate itself rather than to serve the people, but reports like this from the Attorney General certainly strengthen the impression of a closed shop validating its own practitioners. 

It also shows up a certain contradiction in the purpose of the office itself: The Attorney General is legal adviser to each Government department and certain public bodies, but is also the representative of the public in all legal proceedings for the enforcement of law and the assertion or protection of public rights.

In this particular instance, the issue at hand is not an obscure point of constitutional law but a well-publicised strategy now familiar to much of the population — a strategy which seems manifestly unfair.

Here is a case in which the assertion or protection of public rights seems to be badly needed, yet the Attorney General has seen fit to focus on its role as legal adviser to Government departments instead. A poor choice.