Withdrawal of solicitors over legal aid fees dispute throws court list into chaos

The vast bulk of a lengthy court list extending to 21 pages was adjourned at Trim District Court on Tuesday as a result of the continuing dispute between solicitors and the Department of Justice over the new legal aid reform package .

Central to the reform that is due to come into effect from Wednesday (July1) is a single flat payment per case in criminal law cases of €455 regardless of how many court appearances there are in any case.

Currently, a solicitor is paid for each court appearance, starting at €239.38, and then €59.86 for each subsequent hearing.

The opposition by solicitors has grown to the Minister for Justice’s plans with local members absent from Trim District Court on 9th June with the presiding Judge told that they would not in attendance until 2pm that day because they were at a meeting in Dublin.

Action by the profession has been stepped up in withdrawing services with solicitors annoyed that legal aid rates have not been restored after the 2008 financial crisis.

Spokesman Dermot Monahan at the previous Thursday’s sitting, informed resident Judge Eirinn McKiernan that members of the profession “will not be accepting instructions today from clients.”

This was “due to action being taken by the Minister for Justice to force upon criminal practitioners new uneconomical legal aid rates. “

Mr Monahan claimed that the “Minister for Justice and his predecessors have treated criminal practitioners with the utmost of contempt and he has engaged in the utmost of bad faith in the past negotiations with the Law Society Criminal Law Committee in relation to undoing the cuts to legal aid rates imposed due to the 2008 financial crisis.”

On Tuesday there were 172 charge sheet cases alone, well over 100 summonses, along with juvenile matters and others such as persons arrested on bench warrant and brought before the court.

Virtually all the regular practitioners were not in the court.

Judge McKiernan explained to litigants she was not in a position to deal with those represented in legal aid cases. Unless they wanted to finalise matters. It was up to them.

She repeated later she was not able to go ahead with cases which had to go back, many of which were adjourned to 1st September and one later in the month where the Director of Public Prosecutions directions were required, and others to earlier dates.