More “bottlenecking” of cases ahead, Séamus Clarke SC, chair of the Council of the Bar of Ireland, tells Newstalk Breakfast

Continued adjournments of criminal cases due to legal aid disputes over a flat fee for solicitors could lead to ongoing disruptions and further delays, with particular severity in Dublin, Galway and Cork.

Mr Clarke said “We are deeply concerned about the disruption that’s ongoing to the criminal justice system, and it's severely impacting the progress of criminal trials”.

“The Bar Council is a representative organisation. We actually champion the rule of law and access to justice, and really this is an access to justice issue,” Mr Clarke said. 

Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan introduced a flat fee of €520 for solicitors in July 2026, aiming to improve efficiencies, speed up case resolution and reduce unnecessary adjournments. 

However, this has resulted in pushback from solicitors, leading to thousands of court cases being adjourned. This could result in cases becoming “unattractive and not viable cases for solicitors to take on because you’re going to be involved in cases that could go on for a year or two years. So they’re not viable economically,” Mr Clarke said.

“It meant that a large number of cases, including people who have been convicted of very serious crimes up to rape, are on bail. If those people are on bail, their cases were adjourned into July, hoping the dispute would be over by the end of July and now have been adjourned into October,” Mr Clarke said. 

Complex cases that take a long time could become unattractive to solicitors due to them not being economically viable, including family law disputes and domestic violence disputes, Mr Clarke said. 

“If solicitors aren’t working and have withdrawn instructions, that means that barristers, come the 5th of October, will not have instructions on a wide variety of cases and cases just won’t get on,” Mr Clarke said. 

“There will be a lot of barristers who, unless they’re involved in the limited type of cases that are getting on, it means that there will be limited work to be done,” he said.