Roscommon solicitors meet local TDs over legal aid dispute
The solicitors have warned that the scheme is having knock-on effects for victims, vulnerable defendants, and the courts system in Roscommon. Pic: iStock
Criminal law solicitors practising in Roscommon met with local TDs, Claire Kerrane and Michael Fitzmaurice, at Leinster House on Wednesday to raise urgent concerns about the new model for criminal legal aid, introduced by the Department of Justice on July 1st.
The solicitors warned that the scheme is already forcing solicitors off criminal legal aid panels - with knock-on effects for victims, vulnerable defendants, and the courts system in Roscommon.
Representatives for the Roscommon Bar Association, solicitors Alan Gannon and Con Harlow, said: "Solicitors are resigning from the Scheme in unprecedented numbers. In addition to those who have resigned from the Criminal Legal Aid panel, a large number have stopped working under the new Scheme. A Law Society poll of 260 solicitors, who were on the Criminal Legal Aid panel in June, found that just 3 (out of 260) were continuing to work under the new Scheme.
"These changes will have a profoundly negative impact on access to justice and it’s not just solicitors saying this - groups including the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), and Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) have all voiced concerns about the negative impact the changes will have on the justice system. We are going to have a legal desert in Roscommon at this rate.
"As we have told the Minister many times, the Department of Justice is replicating a model that has already proven to be a failure – in family law. The same approach in Civil Legal Aid (family law) drove solicitors out of this area of practice and created legal deserts, with the Legal Aid Board itself reporting it cannot maintain a consistent nationwide service. Replicating it in criminal law will predictably produce the same exodus.
"The Department has designed a structure that assumes every case is the same. It isn't. A case involving a child, or someone with a serious addiction or mental health difficulty, needs far more time - more court appearances, more meetings and more patience. None of that is reflected in a flat payment."
The solicitors used the meeting to ask Deputies Claire Kerrane and Michael Fitzmaurice to raise the matter directly with the Minister for Justice and to press for immediate engagement with the Law Society.
