Holly Cairns: Courts in Chaos - Minister Must Reverse Changes

Minister it's another week of chaos in the criminal courts as hundreds of solicitors have withdrawn their services for legal aid. Thanks to the actions of Minister O'Callaghan thousands of cases have already been adjourned not just in the district court but the circuit court and central criminal court where the most serious crimes are prosecuted. Yesterday at the central criminal court 12 rape cases were listed. Of that number just two trials were able to start and that is only because the defendants in those two cases were minors and solicitors have not withdrawn their services in cases involving children. All of the other cases were adjourned. This is an absolute disaster. Minister it was also reported today that a man has been charged with murder without having access to legal advice during Garda questioning. I don't want to comment on this case or any other before the courts but we should all be aware that being unable to access legal advice in Garda stations could pose very serious problems in subsequent criminal trials. Minister the question for government is how long are you going to allow this chaos to continue because this is a crisis of the Justice Minister's own making. I have serious concerns about the way Minister O'Callaghan has gone about this. At every stage he has failed to meaningfully engage with solicitors preferring instead to just portray them as abusing the system and being unethical. The Minister and clearly the government seem to believe criminal legal aid solicitors are gaming the system and trying to line their pockets by prolonging criminal cases. The problem for the Minister is he doesn't have a shred of evidence to back this up. For a start his own internal review is clear that it doesn't know the reason adjournments are requested. Also it's just a matter of fact that ordinarily adjournments are requested by the state because of some delay on the prosecution side. And finally it is judges who grant adjournments. So does the Minister seriously think judges are conspiring with solicitors to delay cases so solicitors can make more money? Because that seems to be the implication. Minister this chaos simply cannot continue. These changes to the legal aid system must be reversed. Then there needs to be a real consultation about reforms that would genuinely improve the system. My question is do you share our concerns about the chaos we are witnessing in the courts and will the government admit that the Minister's attempt to ram through these changes have been a disaster? Thank you. Minister please. Thank you Deputy Curran. So just say that the Minister for Justice has introduced an 8% increase in criminal legal aid fees payable to solicitors in the circuit court and higher courts from the 1st of July 26 and this represents total restoration of the criminal legal aid fees under FEMPE. He's also introduced a fee as you've described there of 520 euro for district court criminal cases under the criminal legal aid scheme and this figure represents the current fee paid for five appearances in the district court plus an 8% increase. The weighted average of appearances by a solicitor in criminal cases is legally aided is five. Many cases often require fewer appearances to be concluded and the objective of these reforms for Minister O'Callaghan is to make the system more effective and efficient and he's set out very clearly why he was trying to do this. It will also ensure that those accused of crimes are provided with the legal representation to which they are constitutionally entitled and in considering the need for reform it's important to note well while criminal case volumes in the district court have actually decreased, expenditure on the criminal legal aid in the district court has increased from 19 million euro in 2015 to over 41 million euro in 2025 and I think every minister across government must examine reform and no area of expenditure should be immune from reform and changing a system to make it work for better, make it work better for people and in the context of reform it's important that Minister O'Callaghan has assessed this area. The Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration reviewed more than 350,000 district court cases which took place during 2022 and 2023 and again developed reform proposals in that regard and the system that has been reformed is designed to improve efficiencies, reduce unnecessary adjournments, simplify the administration of criminal legal aid, speed up case resolution and enable faster payments to practitioners. Under the new system for cases in the district court regardless of the number of appearances a set fee will be payable to solicitors replacing the previous appearance based sliding scale and the review that was undertaken showed that cases with criminal legal aid take an average of 313 calendar days to complete compared to 133 days for cases without. The weighted average appearances for cases with criminal legal aid is 5 while the weighted average for appearances without criminal legal aid is just over 3 and while cases where criminal legal aid takes significantly longer than those without the outcomes are similar. So the reforms that Minister O'Callaghan is progressing are to address the structural issues identified during this review. These include unnecessary adjournments resulting from the payment per appearance model and to deliver a reformed criminal legal aid system that works for everybody, is efficient and effective and provides value for money for the taxpayer and it's in that context which he's advanced the reforms and also in which he increased the fee which was set a few weeks ago to the 520 euro which provides for the FEMPE restoration. Deputy Kearns. Minister I think everybody agrees that reform is needed. The point is that the Minister's approach has been an absolute disaster. So his review looked into 350,000 cases. He's repeatedly citing three cases. Three in 350,000 doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. In addition to that his main argument for pointing the finger at solicitors is the number of adjournments but there's no mechanism for recording the reason for adjournments and we all know that the majority of them come from the state side. So why isn't he introducing a mechanism to record the reason for adjournments and taking it from there? It simply doesn't make sense and the final point I would make is it has resulted in cases not being heard in their thousands. There's people who can't access free legal aid, crucially. There's cases not being heard and there are victims who ultimately won't get justice. Where is this going to end? Is there anything other than a climb-down for the Minister at this point? What is the government going to do now that you're in this situation? Will you accept your approach? Deputy Minister Chambers will respond. Well you've set out the need for reform but you haven't said anything about how you'd reform it or what you'd do. No, no, we've set out, the Department of Justice did advance a review. Minister Callaghan has been informed by that and he's taken, has been informed by it and has taken the respective reforms and progressed them. There is a distinction between the operation of how the criminal legal aid system has been working with comparative cases and those who are not on criminal legal aid of three to five. He's providing for a weighted payment of five and providing the FEMPE restoration accordingly. We all want to see a system that works, that's victim focused and that's absolutely the case. But we also need a system that has sustainability of expenditure and when you see the growth of expenditure on the criminal legal aid scheme over the last number of years despite reduced case volume in the district courts, that has to raise legitimate questions from a government that wants to drive reform and that's why he's evaluated this and has taken an informed view on progressing it and he has said as well that he'll keep the operation of the new scheme under review.