"International companies will shy away from doing business in Ireland"

More ink is spilled by politicos in the legal profession on the meme that the independence of the profession will be destroyed if the Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011 is passed. Today's newspapers contain claims that "cross border trade would suffer and international companies will shy away from doing business in Ireland if the legal profession was under government control." The paragraph above that quote suggests that Ireland will become like China if the Bill is passed. The obvious difficulty with that analogy - China continues to attract enviable levels of foreign investment - seems to have escaped notice.
The Independent's report also contains the laughable claim that there could be litigation in the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights over provisions in the Bill.