Department spends €1 in every €17 on legal costs

The children’s minister has pledged to tackle escalating court costs in childcare cases following the revelation that €1 in every €17 spent by her department goes on legal bills.

A total of €25.4m was spent by the Department last year on legal fees, a sum that equates to its entire capital expenditure budget for building and infrastructure this year.

Of particular concern is the €6m paid to the unregulated guardian ad litem (GAL) service, which is used to give the child at the centre of a case an independent adult to accompany them and represent their interests.

The majority of GALs are former social workers. Barnardos, the charity which is the biggest single provider of GALs, has established training and practice standards for its personnel, but it is open to anyone to set themselves up as a GAL without training or supervision.

A study on the service recommended GALs be regulated as far back as 2004 and Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald has spoken repeatedly of the need for reform but so far nothing has happened.

However, her department yesterday said reform was a priority. “It is acknowledged that the current arrangements for guardian ad litems has evolved on a somewhat ad hoc basis. Over the last number of years, costs have escalated, in particular, as regards the appointment of legal teams to GALs.”

According to the figures, one GAL was paid €454,000 last year while the second highest earning GAL received €311,000 but, as GALs were increasingly requesting legal representation themselves, the full cost associated with the GAL service was much higher.

Childcare cases also proved lucrative for barristers and solicitors, with one senior counsel receiving €1.3m in fees and several solicitors firms each receiving fees totalling hundreds of thousands of euro.

The heavy spend on legal fees comes as a report by health watchdog Hiqa showed a third of children in foster care in one area of Dublin did not have a social worker because of a chronic shortage of frontline staff, and many were living in homes where there were concerns over their safety and wellbeing as a result.

Children’s advocates have also called for childcare cases to be handled as far as possible away from the courts to reduce the adversarial nature of proceedings as well as the associated costs.