News archive Conference of Local Authority Solicitors Bar Association 2015

The Conference of Local Authority Solicitors Bar Association (LASBA) was hosted by the School of Law, NUI Galway last month. LASBA represents in-house solicitors of the Local Authorities in Cork City and County, Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, County Galway, County Kerry, South Dublin, and County Wicklow. Law Agents for other counties also attended the conference. LASBA is officially recognised by the Law Society of Ireland as a representative bar association.

This conference links with the Law and Local Government Module within the LLM in Public Law at NUI Galway, now in its 7th year. It is the only such dedicated law course in the country.

The work of local authority solicitors spans the 700+ activities of local authorities, from land purchase, planning, regulatory enforcement, ensuring due process in local government activities, public procurement contracts, defending claims against the authority. It even extends to such areas as regulating trans-frontier shipments going though Irish ports under the Basel Convention. There are many new challenges, not least in the growing EU law provisions impacting on local government, but also in relation to balancing the roles of regulator and service provider in key areas, such as waste management. The growing relevance of human rights law, too, is impacting on local authority law. Few lawyers operate in such a legally complex environment.