Judge: Broke HSE always finds €800 an hour for lawyers

A circuit court judge has said it is amazing how the HSE claims to have funding shortages and yet has no problem in paying €800 an hour to legal teams to represent it in court.

Hearing that HSE West had stopped funding services for a teenager with psychiatric and psychological difficulties who had attempted to rob several women in Galway City last year, Judge Gerard Griffin said: “It is something that amazes me in all my time on the bench that they [the HSE] seem to send in [to court] senior counsel, junior counsel, and solicitors who charge €800 an hour and then say they have no money.”

He held up a letter signed by HSE area manager Catherine Cunningham, containing just one line acknowledging receipt of correspondence from a psychiatrist in the Central Mental Hospital who recommended the youth receive long-term, ongoing HSE residential care and psychiatric treatment. Judge Griffin said he was “entirely unhappy” with the reply from the HSE, which did not even address the psychiatrist’s recommendations.