Civil legal aid scheme 'in absolute crisis' in some parts of the country, TD says
Vivienne Clarke
Sinn Féin’s Justice spokesperson Matt Carthy has said the civil legal aid scheme in parts of the country was “in absolute crisis”.
This was why the Oireachtas Justice Committee (of which he is chairperson) has unanimously called on the Minister to suspend the current scheme, provide the proper data and engagement with the representative organisation “so that we can actually do what the Minister says he wants to do, which is create an effective district court system.”
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland, Carthy said the reason the scheme was in crisis was because of the payment structure that has been in place for a number of years, which had led to an exodus of solicitors from the civil legal aid scheme and “a huge backlog” in family law cases.
“What the Minister has done is now replicate that model and put it into the criminal legal aid scheme, which means that he hasn't learned from the lessons of the past, has already led to significant disruption in our court service because he has done this without proper engagement with the representatives of solicitors."
He said there is "a fundamental problem" in the Minister's logic.
"If he is saying that the current system incentivises the lengthening of the process, continual adjournments of cases, well then the corollary of that is that the system that he has now introduced will incentivise shorter cases and actually ensure that some people won't get access to the justice that they deserve.
“My concern is ensuring that we have an effective court system operating that's serving the people it's supposed to serve. The difficulty is it's the actions of the Minister that have actually done the opposite of what his stated intention is," he said.
“Because we've seen further adjournments, we've seen huge disruption within our courts over the past number of days and weeks.
"The likelihood and the evidence that the Justice Committee heard this week is that there will be withdrawals from the criminal legal aid scheme that will result in a less effective court system," Carthy said.
"I think all of this could have been avoided by actually having proper engagement with the representatives of solicitors, but crucially, proper data.
“I think the language that the Minister has used, which has been seen as blackening an entire sector of the legal profession, has not been an appropriate way of engaging or resolving this dispute.
"But I think we have a right to ask how many adjournments are actually caused at the request of the prosecution? How many are caused as a result of requests for further assessments? How many are actually at the request of the courts themselves? The difficulty is adjournments happen for a number of reasons.
"We want to reduce the number of them. We want to ensure that our court service becomes more effective. But what the Minister has actually done is the opposite of that this week.”
