The Supreme Court has again urged the legislature to consider
whether the outright prohibition on professional litigation funding
and the assignment of bare causes of action continues to be
warranted as the ever-increasing cost of litigation is putting
access to the courts beyond the reach of many.
While the Court accepted that this is an area in need of careful
and considered legislative reform, it warned that unless a real
effort is made by the legislature to improve access to justice, it
will have "no option" but to step in, "undesirable
and all as unregulated change might be."
The call for reform was made by Chief Justice Frank Clarke and
Judge William McKechnie in their judgments in SPV Osus Ltd v HSBC Institutional Trust Services
(Ireland) Ltd & Ors, in which the Court found that the
assignee of a claim arising from Bernard Madoff's ponzi scheme
fraud could not bring proceedings before the Irish courts as the
assignment was contrary to Irish public policy.
