2026-07-01

1. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration whether any assessment has been made of the risk that the proposed changes to the criminal legal aid scheme could result in reduced participation by solicitors in criminal legal aid work; the implications of any such reduction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49647/26]

As predicted by many, we now have a chaotic situation in the courts, and in the District Court, in particular, due to the Minister’s new criminal legal aid scheme. It would be helpful if the Minister would outline to the House the assessments he carried out beforehand in respect of the risk of the changes to the criminal legal aid scheme, any potential for reduced participation by solicitors in this work and the implications of any such reductions.

I thank the Deputy for his question. I also thank him for organising the meeting of his committee yesterday and for inviting me to it. I thought it was a very useful and effective meeting. It gave me an opportunity to put out the reasons I am introducing this new scheme in respect of the District Court. Obviously, it also gave other persons whom the committee invited, members of the legal profession, an opportunity to appear before it as well. In terms of what has happened since yesterday, the first thing I should emphasise is that the 8% increase in criminal legal aid fees, which has long been due and should have been restored a long time ago, has commenced as of today. As the Deputy knows, I said that would happen and it has happened as of today. It applies across the board, including in the Circuit Criminal Court and in the Central Criminal Court. In respect of the €520 flat fee I have put in place for the District Court, as I explained yesterday, that has also had the 8% added to it, on top of the five appearances. I think the Deputy also wrote a letter inquiring about the report. I want him to know that the report has been published on the gov.ie website today in the section with criminal legal aid. The Deputy’s concern is, I think, whether this is going to lead to an exodus of criminal law practitioners from the legal aid panel. I do not believe it will. Approximately 825 solicitors are on the criminal legal aid panel. This number has gone up significantly since 2023, when there were only 672 solicitors. This means there is a significant number of solicitors there. Obviously, it is very early days and I do not want to say anything that is going to aggravate the situation. As of today, however, no solicitor has resigned from the panel. Three emails came into the Department from solicitors stating that they would be resigning. As the Deputy knows, however, in order to resign from the panel, solicitors have to contact the section of the Courts Service that deals with this area. I will be keeping a very close eye on this issue.

My question was not about whether the Minister thinks this will have an impact but, rather, whether he carried out an assessment prior to introducing this scheme. I have to take it from the Minister's answer that he has not carried out any such assessment. I welcome the Minister's statement that he does not want to aggravate the situation. It would have been helpful if he had given himself that advice a number of days ago. Many solicitors I have spoken to feel the Minister made an allegation of widespread abuse of the current system against an entire profession. There is deep, deep anger and hurt that has been palpable. The Minister said I know about the system. I do not pretend to know the intricacies of this system. However, I can tell the Minister that people I know and trust, whom I have contacted in respect of dealing with vulnerable cases in the past, have told me they now feel their work is being undervalued, underappreciated and underrecognised by the Minister.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am not here to prioritise the interests of the legal profession and neither is the Deputy. My task is to focus on the administration of justice, people who are brought before the courts, people who are accused of criminal offences and the effective operation of the administration of justice in the criminal section of the District Court. That is my focus. If we look at the fees available, if we want to just leave this as a discussion exclusively about fees, last year, in 2025, the cost of the criminal legal aid scheme was €120 million. Of that, €40 million was attributed to the District Court. Obviously, the significant majority of that money, two-thirds, was attributable to the Central Criminal Court and to the Circuit Criminal Court. I do not believe there is going to be an evacuation of people from the criminal legal aid scheme. It is still a very profitable scheme for solicitors. It is very well paid. Many people have put down parliamentary questions asking about the amount of money that is paid out. Of the 825 people, those at the top receive in the region of €950,000 per annum. At the bottom, the figure is small, namely a couple of hundred euro.

I have engaged with a large number of those from the legal profession regarding these changes to the legal aid scheme, and I really do believe it would be helpful if the Minister took the opportunity to apologise for the manner in which the remarks have been interpreted. It is being generous to him to say he castigated an entire profession and suggested there is widespread abuse of the current system. The representatives of the legal profession have challenged him to provide evidence of that. I certainly have not seen that evidence yet. Does the Minister accept, for example, that custody cases, children’s cases, psychiatric cases and probation-linked sentencing cases cannot reasonably be run within five hearings? This relates to the evidence and testimony our committee received and that I have heard directly. If the Minister accepts my point – I am told that anybody who understands the District Court and how it operates would – does he also accept that there is genuine potential that solicitors will withdraw from the scheme in the same way as they withdrew from the civil legal aid scheme because it simply was not viable for their businesses to continue?

The basis upon which I referred to unethical practices is in the report that is now up on the website, gov.ie. In fairness to the Deputy, I do not believe he has seen it. It is in the criminal legal aid section of the website. I refer to the review of the criminal legal aid system in the District Court. The Deputy mentioned a whole series of cases, including custody cases. I have changed what was originally proposed as a result of my interaction with the Law Society. Any case that now moves forward to a higher court, whether it is the Circuit Criminal Court or the Central Criminal Court, will attract the full fee in the District Court as well. Once a serious case, whether it is a murder case or an assault case, goes to the Circuit Criminal Court, it is going to be subject to the fees that apply in the Circuit Criminal Court and Central Criminal Court, which are very generous and to which, today, I have added 8%. It is a fair scheme. As I said to the Deputy yesterday, my primary focus in doing this is to try to reduce the number of adjournments in the District Court so that we can have more efficient administration of justice in that court.