LAST WEEK I stopped taking criminal legal aid cases and withdrew from providing services.

So did hundreds of my colleagues. This is not a decision any of us made lightly.

It is the last thing we want to do. But unfortunately, we felt that we had no choice.

Effective from the beginning of July – the Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan plans to tear up the way criminal defence work is paid for and replace it with a fixed flat fee (a single payment of €455 for District Court criminal cases) – a change that could reshape access to justice in the District Court and beyond.

On paper, it is being presented as reform. However, it is blunt, simplistic and ill-considered.

In practice, it risks making an already stretched system slower, weaker and less fair for the people who depend on it most: victims and defendants.

What is being proposed mirrors what was already introduced in the area of family law, under the Civil Legal Aid scheme. Very many solicitors stopped working in family law as a result.

This exodus resulted in the Legal Aid Board itself warning that “some areas are now experiencing shortages with no private practitioners available. This affects our ability to maintain a consistent, accessible, and uniform service nationwide”.

‘Inside the Mounting Pressure On the Legal Aid Board’ screamed a recent headline in The Currency.

Given the backdrop, I listened with amazement last week when I heard the minister for justice say he was not concerned that his proposal for Criminal Legal........

© TheJournal