Sweet home
Eminent property solicitor Rory O’Donnell is retiring after an unprecedented half-century on the Law Society’s Conveyancing Committee. Mary Hallissey’s big wheels keep on turning
Veteran solicitor Rory O’Donnell has retired from the Law Society’s Conveyancing Committee – a committee that he served on, or consulted to, ever since its inception in 1974.
He says that he has very much enjoyed his unprecedented 50 years of service: “Events have overtaken some of my knowhow, since I retired from practice, but there is so much that is old law. And I can remember the same issues coming up 50 years ago.”
Rory retired as a partner in Eversheds Sutherland in 2009, but stayed on as a consultant until the end of May 2021.
He remained in practice as a sole practitioner, dealing only with work as an expert witness in property cases, until the end of November 2022, when he retired fully after a remarkable 61 years in practice, where he specialised in conveyancing, construction, planning, and commercial property.
“Well, it is ridiculous,” he muses. “If you were trying to achieve it, it would be an achievement. But it was really the financial crash that changed plans to some extent, and I stayed on after 2011.
“I ended up doing a lot of work as an expert witness in property cockups. And there were a lot of actions taken at the time, a lot of them merited, a lot of them obviously not.
“There are some people who will never recover from the crash, and that has left its mark on people. It absolutely scarred people, some took their own lives, or had nervous breakdowns and never recovered, really.
“It’s a tough one to go from being worth €100 million to being bankrupt in six months. Most people survived, but a lot didn’t. It was tough on everyone.”
Tuesday’s gone
Rory has always strongly advised his clients to never, ever mix their personal and their business banking.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve said to people, ‘your bank manager is not your friend’. They listen, and they may know I am right. But they don’t do anything about it. I would have had many a tussle with banks where they were trying to get a family home as part of a guarantee.
“And the banks were ruthless and applied pressure. And when things are good, people will give in, because advice is one thing – but when the bank manager is holding the ‘keys to the kingdom’, so to speak, a lot of people sign things they wish they hadn’t.”
Rory believes that economic progress in the country has not been spread evenly.
“That’s the problem, and the Government has got away with not dealing with social housing for so many years, and local authorities stopped building houses. There is too much stopgap thinking and going from crisis to crisis.”
Housing targets should be increased substantially, he suggests, and housing should be treated as a national emergency.
Simple man
One of six children from near Ballybrittas, Co Laois, Rory’s father Joe was a Donegal teacher and native Irish speaker who relocated with his wife Sally to the midlands from a national school on Arranmore Island.
At almost 87, Rory attributes his good health and physique to his love of both ballroom dancing and walking, as well as to good genetics.
After school in Monasterevin, he was apprenticed with his brother Aidan’s legal firm in Portarlington. However, he soon struck out for the capital and got a job with well-known solicitor Dominic M Dowling, where he worked for six years before setting up on his own on Baggot Street in Dublin 2 in 1967.
Working for himself was the natural next step for Rory, because he felt that there wasn’t room to grow in his initial position.
“I never had any misgivings about moving to Dublin,” he reflects. “I mean, there were advantages in a small town, because the solicitors have a better quality of life, but they are envious of the people in the city, because they think it’s a honey pot. But the big work comes with big pressure, hassle, and the long hours.
“I received good tuition on conveyancing from Dominic Dowling, because he was very clever, a very capable solicitor.
“In a way, you sort of slide into it, and the work comes to you. Then you’re in a hamster wheel, and you must keep it turning.
“I had no business contacts in Dublin, but I established contacts and got to know people, and it grew from there. Conveyancing was the work that gravitated to me. I ended up getting a certain amount of residential work, private homes, but that eventually led into building, and then into commercial property.”
Rory did some family law but found it frustrating and poorly paid, with few legal solutions available for his clients at the time.
Free bird
What did Rory like about practice?
“As a sole practitioner, there’s a sense of isolation. You can see the work you have, but you can’t see beyond six months down the road. And I’m not saying you live in perpetual fear. I was a positive person, but if you were negative, it would be a constant worry. Things are much better now, in that people form discussion groups, but that didn’t happen then.”
Administration was the hardest part of working as a sole practitioner, Rory reflects. “I would have preferred just to do my legal work,” he says ruefully.
What Rory did find useful over the years was technology, which he readily embraced, investing in a photocopier in 1967.
“I spent years trying to get a system where I could track my useful items of know-how, to be able to find them instantly on a computer. I ended up with two filing cabinets full of stuff with headings for problem-solving items.
“Let’s say I was almost ready to retire by the time the system that could make it easy appeared!”
He is very aware of the danger of cyberattacks: “It’s almost back to the 1800s, when pirates were loose on the high seas and highwaymen on the roads. I’m glad not to be trying to cope with this piracy. The advantage of a bigger firm is that you have good tech people there, as back-up.”
Rory’s practice saw great success and expanded considerably over the years, driven by the gradual addition of talented partners.
Rory O’Donnell and Co became O’Donnell Sweeney in 1995, when Joe Sweeney, who had previously practised in Limerick, joined the existing five partners.
O’Donnell Sweeney had a ‘best friends’ relationship with Eversheds from early 2000 and entered into a formal link in November 2005. The link with Sutherland (a US firm) came later.
Searching
“There were no published books on Irish land or conveyancing law when I qualified,” Rory recalls. “There simply wasn’t any money in them.”
Eventually, with the help of the Law Society and the Arthur Cox Foundation, the definitive texts were written by Rory’s friend Prof John Wylie, including Irish Land Law, Irish Conveyancing Law, and Irish Landlord and Tenant Law.
Research was extremely difficult prior to the publication of Wylie, Rory said. “It took a lot of time and running around to find the information that you needed, and it was like practising with one hand tied behind your back. It is not possible to overemphasise how helpful and important Wylie’s texts were to practising solicitors and barristers.
“I and a few other solicitors read chapters of Irish Conveyancing Law and provided John with practical comments. Doing that modest job made me appreciate the huge research that went into both those books. Irish Conveyancing Law was first published in 1978 and was very welcome.
“Other important books followed, but the first two were a game-changer for practitioners. Irish Land Law and Irish Conveyancing Law became the bibles for solicitors in trying to solve conveyancing queries.”
Same old blues
From long experience, Rory believes that Irish conveyancing law needs to move into the modern age.
“There is some hope there. The Department of the Taoiseach set up an expert Conveyancing and Probate Implementation Group under the Housing for All Action Plan, in November 2023. The members included Michael Walsh, a senior member of the Conveyancing Committee. That body published a progress report in June 2025.
“I am hopeful that we will soon be moving towards the ability to carry out conveyancing online, but there are many complications to be resolved.” Rory says.
“The adoption of digital signatures is just one of them. These are widely used in other commercial transactions. This will only happen if the Government helps to make it happen,” Rory says.
He has seen all sorts of shenanigans as a conveyancing solicitor over the years and observes that some Irish people can readily ignore planning rules that don’t suit them.
“The Department of the Environment issued a booklet in 1972 about what is proper in planning applications – what conditions were right and wrong. Local authorities didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to it. We’re good at making rules and regulations in this country, but not good at enforcement.
“A lot of these non-compliance matters just drift on and the rules aren’t enforced and nothing happens. Yes, this is Ireland.”
He believes that judicial reviews have often held up essential development.
“It would be so beneficial to end all these judicial reviews. The ones on planning matters, clearly, to me, are an abuse,” he says. “There is a tendency to object first and think afterwards.”
Rory believes that when it comes to planning and construction matters, Irish people can be devious: “There is an ongoing battle between planning authorities and Irish people, when it comes to what they see as their entitlement. They don’t like rules that don’t suit them.”
Objectors often feel better if they can air their concerns in a public inquiry, Rory notes, and may not proceed with their objection after being heard.
“For whatever reason, building infrastructure by statute has fallen out of fashion. Ardnacrusha was built on foot of a statute,” Rory comments.
“In terms of big jobs that need to be done, why not investigate a way in which you can avoid the objectors being able to judicially review it. I think that would be progress. The current situation is ridiculous. Because when judges find some loophole that wasn’t considered, they have no option.”
Call me the breeze
The Conveyancing Committee is a valuable resource, because it offers a broad mix of perspectives, and queries come in from all around the country. It took over the review and updating of Law Society standard documents, such as contracts, requisitions, and building agreements, which had previously been dealt with by ad hoc groups.
“The committee was never elitist. From the beginning, it included a mix of solicitors of varying experience from all around the country,” Rory says.
“Back then, the Law Society had no relationship with any of the Government departments. It was hopeless – all they could do was write tough letters to different departments.
“All that changed under the leadership of [former director general] Jim Ivers, who seemed to know everyone in the public service and was a great help in establishing lines of communication.”
The committee cannot determine matters of law, but has always striven to give guidance and issue practice notes on problem areas, he says. It also seeks to resolve disputes between colleagues, with personal intervention by phone call to solve an impasse where possible.
“In my opinion, the committee has been a great success,” Rory says. “Of course, the committee has not been able to please everyone, but solicitors who criticise need to be reminded that all the members and consultants are volunteers who give of their time generously, despite the neverending demands of practice and life.”
Mary Hallissey is a journalist with the Law Society Gazette.