Gannon criticises Minister for Justice for “hatchet job” reforms to legal system

Social Democrats TD and justice spokesperson Gary Gannon has said that the Minister for Justice’s proposed reform of criminal legal aid is a “hatchet job” that will “cripple” the Irish legal system.

The Dublin Central TD warned that if the Minister’s proposals were allowed to pass, it would “cripple the legal system.”

On Wednesday, it was reported that Minister O’Callaghan would introduce a flat-fee payment model for District Court cases.

The reasoning behind the Minister’s recommendation, per The Journal, is to make changes to criminal legal aid fees paid to solicitors.

No matter how much work is entailed, or how many appearances in court are required, solicitors would only be paid €455 for their work.

This, per Gannon, goes against the principles of free and fair justice.

“The Justice Minister’s proposed hatchet job on criminal legal aid, and the maligning of solicitors who provide that hugely important service, is despicable,” he said.

“In order to justify huge cuts to legal aid, the Department has selectively leaked a report, or parts of it, to the media – highlighting cases in which a minority of lawyers abused the system to gouge the state.”

“These outlier examples of abuse of the system are now being used as a pretext to justify the wholesale decimation of a critical component of our justice system.

“It also amounts of a maligning of the reputations of the vast majority of criminal legal aid solicitors who do their work diligently, efficiently and fairly.

Gannon said “they are not scammers, gaming the system, as the Justice Minister has tried to intimate. They are providing an important public service that is vital to the administration of justice.”

“To be clear, the administration of justice would grind to a halt in this country were it not for criminal legal aid solicitors – and the Justice Minister is about to learn that, as an increasing number around the country withdraw their services.

“Replacing the current appearance-based system of payments for a flat fee is unworkable, unfair and outrageous,” Gannon said.

“This, according to the Department, is an attempt to speed up cases and reduce the number of adjournments.

“However, anyone who visits any District Court around the country will immediately see that it is usually the state that is to blame for cases being adjourned.”

“In many cases, court lists are too long and cases are adjourned because they are not reached; or Gardaí fail to turn up at Court to give evidence; or the DPP has not decided what kind of charges to proffer against a defendant; or a book of evidence may not be ready; or a defendant doesn’t turn up to court. None of this is the fault of solicitors and none of it is within their gift to change,” he said.

“Nobody is saying that the existing criminal legal aid scheme is perfect and of course any system of state payments should have clear controls and oversight.”

Gannon said that Minister O’Callaghan was “taking a sledgehammer to the system” and “making it unviable for solicitors to do criminal legal aid work.”

“Reform of the criminal legal aid scheme should happen, but it must be reform that improves it – not undermines and damages it and the justice system,” Gannon said.

“The Justice Minister’s handling of this fiasco has been unnecessarily divisive, combative and utterly cackhanded; he should defer the proposed introduction of this flat fee, which is scheduled to happen in less than two weeks, and urgently get into talks with the Law Society, who represent criminal legal aid solicitors.”