An emergency early morning meeting between the Bar Council and the Department of Justice failed yesterday to resolve a dispute over the late payment of fees to barristers in criminal trials. Consequently, the legal aid scheme has broken down, the outgoing chairman of the Bar Council, Mr James Nugent SC, said yesterday.
Contacts are continuing but if agreement cannot be reached for a new legal aid payment system before the end of July it may lead to the abandonment of a plan to hold criminal trials in Dublin during September.
On Wednesday, it was announced that the acting President of the Circuit Court, Mr Justice Diarmuid Sheridan, had decided Dublin Circuit Criminal Court would return three weeks earlier that the official start date of October 6th, following the summer vacation.
Failure to resolve the payments issue before the official start of the new law term in October could drastically affect the working of the court, which deals with 4,000 indictable cases annually. Most of the cases involve legal aid. Mr Nugent told Judge Kieran O'Connor in Court 24 yesterday that a "difficulty" had arisen with the Department of Justice system of payments for barristers in criminal cases.
Mr Nugent said there had been a meeting with Department officials earlier in the morning in an effort to arrange a new legal aid scheme and contacts would continue. But, he added: "The legal aid scheme has, in effect, broken down."
He said he did not want to give the impression barristers were going on strike or withdrawing from the scheme. The Bar Council was anxious to have a new scheme put in place and he did not want to point the finger of blame at any one.
He said he did not want to indicate a belief that the situation would be any better by July 28th when it is planned to fix trial dates in over 40 cases for September.
Mr Nugent asked Judge O'Connor not to list any cases, in which the accused wanted a trial date, for the July 28th listing session.
Judge O'Connor said the planned session for September may have to be abandoned if a resolution was not reached soon.
The "regrettable" problem of late payments had arisen before and structures would have to be put in place to prevent it happening in the future.
Defendants had a right to a defence barrister, who in turn, should be paid for the work done, said the judge.
It is also understood there are no significant delays in the Circuit Court, unlike the Central Criminal Court, where there is a huge backlog of rape and murder trials.