Legal aid row could worsen disruption across Irish courts, warns Sinn Féin

Mr O’Callaghan has insisted the new fee model will be “very generous” but will also remove “serious inefficiencies” in the District Court system, where spending on criminal legal aid has soared in recent years. Picture Larry Cummins

Disruption across Ireland's court system due to withdrawals from the criminal legal aid scheme will "result in a less effective court system", according to Sinn Féin justice spokesperson Matt Carthy.

Solicitors participating in the scheme have said they will resign from the panel en masse if payment changes proposed by justice minister Jim O'Callaghan are signed into law.

Currently, solicitors are paid approximately €240 for a client's first court appearance and about €60 for each subsequent sitting.

However, Mr O'Callaghan wants to replace this with a single payment regardless of the number of court appearances.

The minister has insisted the new fee model will be "very generous" while also removing "serious inefficiencies" in the District Court system, where spending on criminal legal aid has increased significantly in recent years.

The single payment is expected to be between €455 and €582 per case.

Since the dispute began earlier this month, solicitors already assigned to cases have been appearing in court to say they are not in a position to act for their clients. An escalation of the action is expected to lead to further delays across the criminal justice system.

Books of evidence are already not being served in some cases to allow matters to proceed from the District Court to the Circuit Court for trial, and some bail applications are also being made without legal representation.

Sinn Féin justice spokesperson Matt Carthy said the civil legal aid scheme in parts of the country was "in absolute crisis".

"This was why the Oireachtas Justice Committee, of which I am chairperson, has unanimously called on the Minister to suspend the current scheme, provide the proper data and engage 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," he told RTÉ's Morning Ireland on Thursday.

Mr Carthy said the civil legal aid scheme was in crisis because of the payment structure that had been in place for a number of years, which had led to an exodus of solicitors and created "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. It 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's a fundamental problem in the Minister's logic. If he is saying that the current system incentivises the lengthening of the process through continual adjournments of cases, then the corollary is that the system he has now introduced will incentivise shorter cases and could ensure that some people won't get access to the justice they deserve.

"My concern is ensuring that we have an effective court system operating that serves the people it's supposed to serve. The difficulty is that the actions of the Minister have actually done the opposite of what his stated intention is," Mr Carthy added.

The TD said there had been further adjournments and "huge disruption" within the courts over the past number of days and weeks.

"The likelihood, and the evidence 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. I think all of this could have been avoided by proper engagement with the representatives of solicitors and, crucially, proper data," Mr Carthy said.

“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," he added.