Dusting off Pringle

The Civil Legal Aid Review sees a future for community law centres in Ireland. Frank Murphy assesses the review in light of the 1977 Pringle Report on Civil Legal Aid

The Civil Legal Aid Review, published in April 2025, sees a future for community law centres in Ireland in both its majority and minority reports.

While the reports differed in their approach to legal-aid provision, both reference the Pringle Report 1977, the outcome of the deliberations of the Committee on Civil Legal Aid and Advice that was set up in 1974.

One of the key recommendations of Pringle was the establishment of community law centres (CLC), which were to provide civil legal aid and advice, in combination with the services of private practitioners.

The recommendation was never implemented – instead, the Legal Aid Board set up service-model law centres throughout the country, with limited resources.

Taking the FLAC

FLAC started in 1969, and the organisation established Coolock Community Law Centre (now Community Law and Mediation) in 1975 – the country’s first community law centre, which was in operation during the tenure of the Pringle Committee (of which FLAC’s Brian M Gallagher was a member).

They had discussions with Brent, Camden, Islington, North Kensington, and Paddington law-centre representatives, and considered the community law-centre service in Manitoba, Canada.

Convinced that there was a pressing need for legal services, Pringle considered the barriers that “deter poor people from seeking the services of a solicitors”.

Cost, lack of knowledge, psychological issues, and difficulty in reaching services would have to be dealt with.

Legal Aid Board

It recommended that the Legal Aid Board be established, and it provided draft heads of a Legal Aid Bill, with legal aid to be provided by solicitors in private practice or employed in a CLC or part-time centre.

In coming to its recommendations, Pringle examined the then current attention given to law centres: “The view was put to us that the law is thought of as neither relevant or accessible to the poor in this country, and the centres will have a part to play in changing this.”

The practical arguments for establishing community law centres were summarised as follows: less difficulty in availing of services, addressing psychological barriers, access, the issue of social class, opening hours, staff expertise, peripheral legal services, and problems rooted in social conditions of deprivation.

As regards whether they would be less expensive to provide, Pringle considered that that argument would have to await a later comparative analysis.

Community law centres

Community law centres should, in the main, provide a legal-advice service and refer cases they were unable to handle to private practitioners, with the Legal Aid Board maintaining the balance in the best interests of the community.

Staff should be free to take part in any activities consistent with the provision of a comprehensive legal-aid and advice service to the community, education on legal rights, etc.

As to the establishment and location of community law centres, Pringle was of the view that the Legal Aid Board itself should set them up, unless proposals were forthcoming at an early stage from, for example, community groups.

Not in a position to say how many would be required, it was considered that at least two should be set up in Dublin, and one each in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway.

Nearly 50 years later, while the Legal Aid Board has service model-law centres nationwide, there are still only two community law centres in Dublin (Coolock and Ballymun) and one in Limerick.

There are none in Cork, Waterford, or Galway – or elsewhere for that matter, though there has been the welcome addition of some independent law centres, including the Mercy Law Resource Centre, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, and the Refugee Council.

Tellingly, Pringle reflects that, while the ideal way to establish community law centres is by local community-group proposals, “it is not an approach which can be relied on completely, because the communities which suffer the most serious disadvantages are likely to be the very ones which will lack the organisation necessary to put forward realistic proposals for the establishment of centres”.

Social worker

In addition to solicitors and support staff, Pringle recommended that a 'social worker' should be employed in each community law centre to provide a ‘filter’ service and to foster and maintain contacts with the local community, social service agencies, etc.

It was considered that the term ‘social worker’ could include people with social-science degrees, law graduates who had some training in social work, and people with practical experience in community work.

Experience has shown the practicality of this suggestion, with Coolock employing a community law officer from the outset, and Ballymun a project officer.

Pringle recommended that each community law centre should have a consultative committee to ensure maximum participation by the local community in the running of their centre, with the Legal Aid Board retaining overall control.

However, the community law centres envisaged by Pringle never materialised.

The Scheme for Civil Legal Aid and Advice established service model-law centres and, while there was reference to consultation with the local community, this was omitted from the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995.

Majority report

In the absence of any Pringle community law centres, the majority report of the Civil Legal Aid Review notes that the seven independent and community law centres (ILCs) have made – and continue to make – a significant contribution to meeting the needs of some of the most disadvantaged communities.

It considers that their participation in any future framework will ultimately be a decision for each centre. Effective use of these law centres may need encouragement and the funding of new centres, and require service-level agreements.

The review group recommends that an implementation group and a new legal-aid oversight body should engage with representatives of the ILCs, and review the practicality of their participation in the future framework.

It considers that this would ensure increased coordination of support for users who require it and, given the position that ILCs occupy in assisting marginalised and vulnerable communities, their participation in the future civil legal-aid support system should ensure that those communities are catered for to the greatest extent possible.

This engagement could explore the operation of a pilot centre, funded to deliver some of the services proposed in the future framework, such as the provision of information and triage services, with the need for new targeted services being informed by the results of regularly conducted legal-needs surveys.

Minority report

The Civil Legal Aid Review’s minority report notes a fundamental area of disagreement with the majority report in relation to this proposed role for independent law centres in the new framework: “The majority report fails to acknowledge that these ILCs cannot meet existing demand given their resources, that they are hugely underfunded, and that they have only a tiny fraction of the resources, staff, and funding of the chronically underfunded and under-resourced Legal Aid Board.”

At the very minimum, the minority report expected that the recommendations of the Pringle Report that the “setting up of community law centres and legal-advice centres should commence as soon as possible” would be repeated.

For the minority report, it is remarkable and profoundly unsatisfactory that the majority report contains no recommendation for a network of community law centres in areas of high deprivation, along with specialised law centres to target areas of particular need, as a core part of the future framework with the reformed Legal Aid Board and Citizens Information Board.

On the ground

In their analysis of the three community law centres operating in Ireland, Whyte and Casey (Social Inclusion and the Legal System: Public Interest Law in Ireland, 2025) consider that Community Law and Mediation demonstrated the advantages of a legal-aid system combining service and strategic elements.

While the collaboration of the Legal Aid Board with Ballymun Community Law Centre shows how the service model could be complemented by a network of strategic law centres, they note that, following the success of Ballymun, a second community law centre was established as part of social-housing regeneration scheme in Limerick.

In Ballymun Community Law Centre, writing this article after receiving the Civil Legal Aid Review, a woman caller on the phone looking for a divorce told me that her local Legal Aid Board centre had closed down.

I can only presume that this was due to the recent lack of funding for the Legal Aid Board that has been highlighted in the media.

It reminds one of Josie Airey walking the streets of Cork and Dublin over 50 years ago trying to get a solicitor to take her case for a separation before she sat down and wrote her letter to the ECHR.

I told the caller I hadn’t heard that, but that she should ring them again anyway, that it would be hard to get through, and that they were inundated with calls.

She could wait a long time for them to pick up, but whatever anyone said, she should wait.

Many people don’t wait and then ring here again possibly two months later – not having waited, they’re still not on the waiting list.

It’s 2025, and there are still the same difficulties in accessing justice. Despite all the waiting and the reviews with differing approaches, on the ground it is positive that both reports acknowledge Pringle’s recommendation that community law centres have a future in Ireland.

Hopefully, this future will be reinforced in the Minister for Justice’s reform proposals.

Frank Murphy is a solicitor at Ballymun Community Law Centre.