Legal Aid
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
============================================================

Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I never pretend to have a better understanding of the court system than the Minister, as somebody who has practised. As he said, I just look at the facts before me. Even if we were to accept the bona fides of the his rationale for introducing this system, and he says the primary reason is a more effective and efficient court service. Nobody could argue that we have a more effective court system as a result of these changes brought in. The court system is in disarray.
The secondary reason is the costs, the excessive costs, as the Minister called them. I have concern that the flat rate model will actually lead to increased costs because, as by his admission, many people will get substantially more for some cases than they would have previously.
However, we have to accept the reality and the reality, as I know it, is that in July of last year, there were 10,000 plus criminal legal aid certificates. In July of this year, that number was 702. There is no way the Minister can attribute, as he suggested, that to be the result of the lack of adjournments or more efficiencies. That is a result of solicitors refusing to engage.
The area that I have a little bit of knowledge about, because the justice committee, which I Chair, has carried out extensive work on it, is the criminal legal aid scheme, which, again, is an absolute disarray in many parts-----

---

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/2026-09-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-16