THE LAW Society has asked the Minister for Justice to meet it to discuss cuts in criminal legal aid fees announced by the Department of Justice this month.
In its letter the society’s director general Ken Murphy says the combined cuts over the past few years “could well make it simply uneconomic for solicitors to provide a criminal legal aid service”. This is particularly the case for solicitors in rural areas, whose travel and subsistence expenses have been cut by 50 per cent.
He also says a request last February to meet officials of the department to discuss a submission from the society on the cuts remained unanswered.
The submission says the department’s target of €5 million savings in criminal legal aid this year and €10 million in a full year takes no account of the rise in prosecutions. Increases in the volume of prosecutions will, therefore, lead to further reductions in what solicitors are paid for the work done.
Last week the Bar Council appealed to Mr Shatter to postpone changes in the criminal legal aid scheme until October so that discussions on alternative means of cost saving could take place.
Three weeks ago the secretary general of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, wrote to the council and the Law Society announcing that fees for defence counsel would be cut by 10 per cent. This would end the parity between the payment of defence and prosecution counsel, following a strike in the 1970s which resulted in a statutory instrument introducing the parity.