Legal costs challenged: Scale of fees are a barrier to justice

ANYONE who has gone through an acrimonious divorce, a complicated business-related court case, or God forbid, a case involving medical negligence where the defendants are not fighting with their own money, did not need the Troika to tell them that Ireland’s legal fees are among the most spectacularly prohibitive in the world or that they were a barrier to the proper conduct of public life. 

Justice is either for the very rich or those who can avail of free legal aid schemes. Going to court is not a course easily undertaken by most citizens as losing could be financially ruinous. Potential bills make the risk untenable.

In effect the cost of legal services denies a great number of citizens the protection of the courts hence the integrity and independence of our justice system, principles regularly trumpeted by the legal profession and the judiciary, are fatally undermined.