Minister to raise flat fee for criminal legal aid
The Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan has told the Law Society that he will increase a proposed flat fee to be paid to solicitors for criminal legal-aid work in the District Court.
Under the proposals, due to take effect tomorrow (1 July), one flat fee would be paid for representation from the beginning to the end of a case.
The proposals have sparked anger among criminal-law solicitors, with some prepared to withdraw services in protest.
The Law Society, Bar of Ireland, and other human-rights and civil-society organisation have expressed concerns about the plans.
Minister O’Callaghan has told the Law Society that the fee will be €520 – up from the initial proposed amount of €455.
Motivation
In a letter to the solicitors’ representative body, the minister said that, under the new system, solicitors would receive the same amount as for five court appearances under the current system .
The minister said that Department of Justice data showed that five was the average number of appearances for cases supported by criminal legal aid.
He pointed out that, from 1 July, fees payable to solicitors in the Circuit Court and higher courts would rise by 8%.
‘Defective’ data
“I hope that this addresses the claim that the motivation behind the reform of the fee structure is to save money,” the minister said, adding that the motivation was to increase efficiency in the system and remove what he described as “the financial incentive that attaches to delay in the current system”.
The Law Society had previously described the data analysis on which the department has based its proposals as “fundamentally defective” and “incomplete”, as it did not include information on issues such as the reasons for adjournments.
The Law Society has said that the plans are based on what it calls a “flawed conclusion” that defendants or their legal representatives are responsible for delays in the courts.
Timing
Minister O’Callaghan also said that he had noted concerns about the timing of payments and their impact on practitioners’ cashflow.
“I am open to considering if there is merit in splitting the fee where a case takes longer than some pre-determined timeframe and would propose that as data on the operation of the new system becomes available over the coming months, that issue will be kept under active review,” he stated.
The minister added that the Department of Justice would keep the new system under review and that he was open to considering changes if the evidence suggested that they were necessary.
'Frustration'
A meeting of criminal-law solicitors at the Law Society earlier this month heard expressions of anger and frustration at the plans.
At the meeting, chair of the Law Society Criminal Law Committee Shane McCarthy expressed particular frustration at what he described the department’s lack of engagement with a Law Society submission on the proposals.
The submission said that a flat-fee approach would undermine an accused’s right to a fair trial “without any acknowledgment of the complexity, personal circumstances, or length of an individual case”.
A survey of criminal-law solicitors published in the Law Society Gazette last month found that a majority of respondents said that the proposal would make them less likely to continue taking on criminal legal-aid work.
A further meeting of criminal-law solicitors was held last night. The minister and representatives of the Law Society are expected to attend an Oireachtas committee hearing on the issue later today (30 June).