Since 2017, Irish law has required the conversation: your solicitor must advise you to consider mediation before issuing proceedings, and swear a declaration that they did. The commercial arithmetic finishes what the statute starts — time, cost, confidentiality, and relationships that have to survive the row. This page is the honest version of both halves, including the part most mediation pages leave out: the disputes that belong in a courtroom.
What the Act Built — and What It Means in a Room
The Mediation Act 2017 gave Irish mediation four load-bearing walls. Section 14 makes the conversation compulsory: before issuing proceedings a solicitor must advise the client to consider mediation, provide information about mediation services, and file a statutory declaration confirming it — with proceedings liable to adjournment if it was not done. Confidentiality protects communications made in mediation from later proceedings, subject to limited and explained exceptions — the candour engine, without which nobody would explore anything. Enforceability under section 11 makes a signed mediation settlement binding as a contract, which answers the question every party asks first. And costs consequences put a price on refusal: courts may invite parties to consider mediation and adjourn for it, and unreasonable refusal to engage can be weighed when costs are decided. Put together, they describe a process with an unusual shape: no commitment at all until the signature, and real finality immediately after it. That shape is why parties who are certain they will never settle still attend — and why a meaningful share of them leave with an agreement.
The Arithmetic — and the Disputes That Belong in Court
The commercial case runs on four axes. Time: a mediation is scheduled around diaries, not court lists, and most commercial disputes get a single prepared day. Cost: the mediator’s fee and preparation, against litigation costs that escalate at every step. Confidentiality: court is public — hearings open, judgments published, the story travelling to competitors, customers, staff and neighbours — while mediation is a private room protected by statute. Relationships: litigation exists to determine who was right, which is a poor instrument for parties who must keep dealing with each other — the OMC still sharing a building, the shareholders still owning a company, the siblings still meeting at Christmas. Now the honest other side. Mediation is the wrong room where there is genuine urgency needing coercive relief — assets moving, works proceeding, information walking out the door, all of which need an injunction now, not a mediation date; where a limitation period is about to expire and nothing is issued; where a party is in genuine bad faith and wants only information or delay; where a precedent or public vindication is actually needed, since mediation makes agreements, not law; and where an imbalance exists that no process design can fix. This practice litigates as well as mediates, which is precisely why it will tell you when your dispute is one to fight.
Is Your Dispute a Mediation or a Fight?
Ten lines describing it, every party named for the conflicts check, and what a good outcome would look like. You get the honest answer - including 'this one belongs in court' where that's the truth.
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