Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Holly Cairns (SD), Cork South-West It is another week of chaos in the criminal courts as hundreds of solicitors have withdrawn their services for legal aid. Thanks to the actions of the Minister for justice, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, thousands of cases have already been adjourned, not just in the District Court but in the Circuit Court and the 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were able to start and that is only because the defendants in those two cases were minors and solicitors have not withdrawn their services in cases involving children.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 the other cases were adjourned. This is an absolute disaster. It was also reported today that a man has been charged with murder without having access to legal advice during Garda questioning. I do not want to comment on this or any other case 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. The question for the Government is how long it will allow this chaos to continue. This is a crisis of the justice Minister's own making. I have serious concerns about the way he 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. Clearly, the Minister and 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 does not have a shred of evidence to back this up. For a start, his own internal review is clear that it does not know the reason adjournments are requested. Also, it is just a matter of fact that, ordinarily, adjournments are requested by the State because there is some delay on the prosecution side. Finally, it is judges who grant adjournments. Does the Minister seriously think judges are conspiring with solicitors to delay cases in order that solicitors can make more money? That seems to be the implication. 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. Does the Minister, Deputy Chambers, share our concerns about the chaos we are witnessing in the courts and will the Government admit that the justice Minister's attempt to ram through these changes has been a disaster? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-07