The Office of the Attorney General – what we do (the brief version!)
The Attorney General is the legal adviser to the Government, is a constitutional officer and independent in the exercise of his or her functions. The clients of the Attorney General, and the Attorney General's Office (AGO) are the executive branch of Government, that is to say the Government as a whole, its individual members and the Departments they head. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to the Government (OPC) and the Chief State (CSSO) are constituent parts of the Office of the Attorney GeneralFootnote 2.
Government Buildings in Dublin's Upper Merrion Street houses the Department of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and, adjacent to it, the Office of the Attorney General.
The main functions of the Office of the Attorney General are to:
• Provide legal advice to Government, Departments and Offices;
• Draft legislation;
• Provide litigation services;
• Provide solicitor services, including conveyancing and other transactional services.
The current Attorney General is Ms. Máire WhelanFootnote 3, S.C. She is the 30thFootnote 4 Attorney General since 1922 and the first woman to be appointed Attorney General.
Electronic Irish Statute Book (eISB)
The Office of the Attorney General provides free access to the electronic Irish Statute BookFootnote 5 (eISB). It contains a fully searchable database of the Acts of the Oireachtas and Statutory Instruments, 1922–2011. It also has a Legislation DirectoryFootnote 6 (1922 – 22 November 2010Footnote 7). The purpose of the Legislation Directory is to enable users of the eISB to identify whether a particular provision has been amended or otherwise affected since its enactment. The electronic Irish Statute Book (eISB) is now optimised for web browser access from all electronic devices from Personal Computers to mobile devices such as Smart phones, iPads, Kindles etc. The Android and iPhone apps (for direct access to the eISB from hand-held devices) are now available free of charge from the Android market and iTunes store.
The Library & Know-how Unit
The mission statement of the Office of the Attorney General is “To provide the highest standard of professional legal services to Government, Departments and Offices as economically and efficiently as possible.”Footnote 8
The Library and Know-how Unit supports the mission of the Office of the Attorney General through the delivery of high quality legal information, research and know-how services to staff.
The primary clients of the Unit are the Attorney General, Advisory CounselFootnote 9, Parliamentary CounselFootnote 10, and AGO administrative and support staff. These clients are based in our office in Merrion Street, Dublin 2. We also provide services to Advisory Counsel who are seconded to various government departments and an Advisory Counsel seconded to the Permanent Representation of Ireland to the European Union.
Our services
Some of the main services provided by the Unit include: access to an online library catalogueFootnote 11, access to a substantial law collection in both hardcopy and electronic formats, a legal know-how database, legal information and research services, information skills training, current awareness services, legislative proof-reading and access to a range of just in time services. We are committed to ensuring that we provide electronic access to a wide range of our services mainly through our library intranet portal and through roaming access to some of our main legal databases. This ensures that lawyers based in our Merrion Street Office, our lawyers seconded to government departments as well as lawyers working out of hours can all access key resources.
Our team
The library and research team is a mix of professionally qualified librarians, legal researchers and a library assistant. Our Legal Researchers are assigned to discrete groups of Advisory Counsel and Parliamentary Counsel in support of the ongoing legal specialisation within the Office. This structure has enabled the library to gain a much better appreciation and understanding of the research and information needs of our lawyers and assists us in identifying ‘hot topics’ and emerging issues where we can provide information and research assistance. Both librarians and researchers attend presentations and seminars on various legal topics within the office in addition to ensuring that we continue to develop our professional skills and competencies.
Knowledge based organisation
The Office of the Attorney General is a knowledge based organisation. One of our key assets is the knowledge and expertise of our staff. We continue to support and embed a culture of knowledge sharing within the office. One of the key frameworks in this regard is our Knowledge Management StrategyFootnote 12 which builds on the success of our previous strategy and underpins our approach to KM. The Library & Know-how Unit continues to play a lead role in developing KM in the Office of the Attorney General.
Challenges
One of the main challenges facing law libraries in the government sector (in common with all libraries at the moment) is the current fiscal environment. Libraries together with the organisations that we work for are ‘having to do more with less’. The challenge for this library as a service provider is trying to balance reduced budgets (and staff resources) and the need to provide value for money on the one hand with the continuing provision of a high standard of library and research service on the other. It is requiring us to turn a spot light on all of the services we provide and ask the hard question – is it core to business or just nice to have?
Please note that the opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the author.
