The Minister for Justice’s demand for quicker court cases would put children at risk, a solicitor has argued. 

Thousands of legal cases have been adjourned as solicitors withdrew their services over proposed changes to legal aid. 

Currently, if a solicitor attends court on behalf of someone receiving legal aid, they are €239.38 for the first day of the case. Subsequently, they are paid €59.86 per day. 

From July, that will be replaced with a flat fee of €455, no matter how long the case takes to conclude. 

Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has said many cases take far too long to conclude. 

“What I don't want to see is what is happening at present, where you have a series of ongoing adjournments with the case not being determined promptly,” he said.

“If you look at the statistics in respect of the length of time it takes for a criminal legal aid case to conclude, you can see that it takes 313 calendar days for a District Court case subject to criminal legal aid to conclude, whereas for those without criminal legal aid, it's 133 days.” 

On The Claire Byrne Show, solicitor Cathy McDarby said she has worked as a solicitor for 23 years and the “complexity” of the work has “greatly increased” since the early 2000s. 

“We have, unfortunately, a large drug epidemic throughout every country in the world, I would say,” she said. 

“When we're in court with the clients, our aim is to get to a point, hopefully, where these people do not come back before the courts. 

“We have a system here where we have a number of applications need to be gone through before a case can actually be dealt with. 

“The drugs cases quite often require DPP directions; they can take quite some time to be dealt with, to receive a number of adjournments, not at the fault of the defence.” 

Ms McDarby continued that people on legal aid are “the most vulnerable in our society”, who are often addicted to drugs or below the age of 18. 

“Juveniles need an awful lot of time,” she said. 

“I am not going to go into a court and put a juvenile at risk by dealing with their case on day one.

“I could do that, absolutely; if I do that, they will not get the supports they need.

“Oftentimes with juvenile cases, they can be adjourned eight to ten times because we need to ensure that any progress they make is solid. 

“It's moving forward and it's ensuring that these juveniles do not come back into the system.” 

While Minister O’Callaghan has alleged there are “clear abuses” of the free legal aid system by solicitors, Ms McDarby described this as an anecdotal assertion that lacks “clear evidence”. 

Main image: A person in handcuffs. Picture by: Alamy.com.