Legal Aid
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16
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Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South

The Law Society produced a very good report earlier this year. One of the issues identified in the report, Justice Indicators, is that criminal cases in Ireland take considerably longer than criminal cases in the rest of Europe. In terms of the process of trying to speed up the administration of justice, there are very few levers I have. However, I genuinely believe one of the levers I have is the mechanism of payment. If I have in place a mechanism of payment that incentivises adjournments and delays, that is necessarily going to happen.
The Deputy mentioned that in July there were only 700 or so certificates, I think he said. The solicitors across the board were on strike in July. The new data we have since the courts opened on 1 September show that about 1,430 new certificates for legal aid have issued since then and around 700 of them have issued in the past two weeks or so. That is a significant commitment.

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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