Minister for Justice to meet Law Society over legal aid row amid ongoing court disruption
Meeting is first face-to-face encounter between sides since late July
A meeting on Wednesday between the Minister for Justice and the Law Society over a controversial criminal legal aid payments model for the District Courts comes amid continuing serious disruption of the work of the criminal courts.
Many criminal defence solicitors withdrew their legal aid services in protest after the new one flat-fee payment model was introduced by the Minister, Jim O’Callaghan, on July 1st.
The withdrawal has led to the adjournment of thousands of cases across all criminal court divisions with knock-on delays affecting crime victims, accused people, lawyers, judges, gardaí, court staff and those called for jury service.
The escalation of the withdrawal last week to include custody cases has aggravated the disruption.
The senior judge managing the Central Criminal Court lists has repeatedly warned solicitors they need court permission to cease representing an accused.
O’Callaghan told the Oireachtas justice committee last week he had replied positively to the Law Society request for a meeting. In her letter accepting that offer, society president Rosemarie Loftus repeated the solicitors’ wish for the meeting to be in person directly addressing the issues in dispute.
The first face-to-face encounter between the Minister and the Law Society since late July is set for 9am on Wednesday, with a Cabinet meeting deferred to 11am to accommodate O’Callaghan’s attendance at both.
In a statement welcoming the development, leading criminal defence solicitors Amanda Connolly, Tony Collier and Colleen Gildernew said it “must be a genuine negotiation and not just a listening exercise”.
They said two issues remained of concern to solicitors. If those were addressed, that would get the scheme “over the line”, said Collier.
The first arises from the single €520 flat fee applying irrespective of the number of appearances a case may require. They said that because many delays are outside solicitors’ control, including having to await directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions, books of evidence or psychiatric and probation reports, a further legal-aid certificate should be available after 10 appearances.
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The second issue related to clients facing several separate and distinct prosecutions. Under the new scheme the solicitor receives one fee if those cases happen to be listed on the same day. In such cases, solicitors want the scheme to permit certificates for separate cases committed on separate dates with the number of certificates capped at 5 per client per court, per day.
They say this would directly address the Minister’s concerns about the issuing of multiple certificates under the old scheme.
O’Callaghan has described the number of multiple certificates among the “abuses” of the old scheme and said the new model was aimed at achieving savings and efficiencies in the context of rising expenditure on criminal legal aid.
While noting the Minister had indicated a willingness to adjust the new model in relation to Children’s Court cases, the solicitors said complex cases requiring more appearances also include domestic violence cases, cases involving clients with addiction, mental-health difficulties or intellectual disability.
