Legal aid group calls for law changes
Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) director general Noeline Blackwell said much remained to be done to develop public interest law to help vulnerable groups get justice.
“It’s another way of ensuring people’s rights are protected. Law is not just about going to court. Public interest law covers all the ways in which one can access legal structures,” she said. Ms Blackwell was speaking as a report on public interest law is launched.
FLAC promotes access to justice as a means of eradicating social and economic exclusion. For the past year it has been evaluating how wider knowledge and use of public interest law can help include people otherwise excluded from society.
Ms Blackwell said: “An awful lot of law is simply done for the benefit of the individual client in a private way. But the law is a public structure and is made for the public interest. On an occasional basis, and in an unstructured way, the law is used by a lot of organisations - people who lobby, politicians, people who go to court to prove a point.
“In FLAC we’ve come to the conclusion - we’ve been working on issues of access to justice for 35 years and more - that if you were to take a more comprehensive, holistic approach on how to use law in the public interest, you could achieve more for the public interest,” she added.
She cited the European Court case, taken by two women, which found it was unfair women were getting less social welfare payments than men.
“That was an approach that took in everything: lobbying, education of the community, and ultimately, going to court. The law is there for the benefit of the public and we should be ready to use the law in the public interest.”
