The staff in the Probate office are extremley helpful. If you paid them a visit with your paperwork, you might actually be surprised at how simple it is with their help. You may even decide you can do it yourself. Hence you won't need a solicitor.
You'll need to take out an advertisement in the newspaper, unfortunately, to make the death known, just in case anyone decides they also have a legitimate claim on the deceased's property. Its just to be on the safe side.
If you are used to doing your own tax returns, the inheritance tax is easy to do also and again the tax office will be very helpful in assisting you.
As far as I know you only receive a tax clearance certificate when this is paid.
All in all, its very straight forward and would not warrant a fee of €19k, which to me, is just ridiculous.