Daniel Downes
Allegation / charges
In the matter of Daniel Downes, a solicitor formerly practising as O’Dea & Company, Solicitors, at 1st Floor, Hardiman House, Eyre Square, Galway, and in the matter of the Solicitors Acts 1954-2011 [4298/DT150/12 and High Court record 2014 no 52 SA] Law Society of Ireland (applicant) Daniel Downes (respondent solicitor) On 21 January 2014, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found the respondent solicitor guilty of misconduct in his practice as a solicitor in that he: 1) Allowed a deficit in his client account as of 1 May 2012 totalling €69,938, 2) Allowed deficits in his client account as of 31 December 2010 and 30 June 2011 of €31,388 and €32,497 respectively, 3) Allowed debit balances of €67,710 to occur on the client ledger account as of 1 May 2012, 4) Cancelled a payment to a barrister in the client ledger and transferred part of the amount involved to the office account as fees, 5) Allowed round sum of lodgements to be made to the office account at times when the office account was under pressure, 6) Failed to keep adequate books of account. The tribunal ordered that the matter go forward to the High Court and, on 28 April 2014, the High Court ordered that: 1) The name of the respondent solicitor be struck from the Roll of Solicitors, 2) The respondent solicitor pay the applicant the costs of the proceedings before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, to be taxed in default of agreement, 3) The respondent solicitor pay the applicant the costs of the High Court proceedings, to be taxed in default of agreement.
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found Daniel Downes guilty of misconduct including deficits and debit balances on his client account, improper transfers, round sum lodgements to the office account, and failure to keep adequate books of account. The matter went forward to the High Court, which on 28 April 2014 ordered that his name be struck from the Roll of Solicitors and that he pay the costs of both the Tribunal and High Court proceedings. No express finding of dishonesty was recorded.
Duties found breached:
- No improper use of client money
- Prompt accounting and return of money
- Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["extracted_from_register_summary"]
Duties engaged
Documents
No documents recorded.
Source: https://www.lawsociety.ie/Public/disciplinarysearch/