The Irish Times view on the legal aid dispute: solicitors should end it now

The four-month dispute between criminal defence solicitors and Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan took a turn for the worse this week, with an escalation in both action and rhetoric.

Solicitors protesting the introduction of a new payment model for free legal aid cases extended their withdrawal of services to include people held in custody and cases involving children. The Minister, for his part, appearing before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice on Tuesday, accused those taking the action of deliberately targeting rape trials, a charge they indignantly denied. Meanwhile, the backlog in the courts continues to build, with thousands of adjournments and a surge in High Court challenges by unrepresented defendants, some of whom have been freed as a result.

None of this reflects well on the solicitors involved, who seem less concerned than they should be by the damage they are inflicting on their clients and on the courts.

Nor does it say much for the Minister’s conduct of his responsibilities. The objective of controlling the cost to the State of the criminal legal aid system, which has risen from less than €50 million in 2014 to a projected 120 million last year, is entirely legitimate. His public handling of the dispute is less so, with unnecessary baiting of the legal profession that has only made a settlement harder.

Caught in the middle are complainants, defendants and their families, who must now wait even longer than before for the justice system to deliver an outcome. That these now include those involved in rape cases, as well as children in the criminal courts, is unconscionable. To have such vulnerable members of society caught up in an argument over fees seems very far removed from the high ethical standards the legal profession purports to represent.

Despite his zeal for savings in this specific budget line, the Minister has shown little appetite for the larger, long-overdue reforms that Ireland’s legal system so clearly needs in order to advance competitiveness, lower barriers to entry and provide better value for money for all.

He was always an unlikely standard-bearer for real reform, given his own successful career as a senior counsel, exactly the sort of insider that the current system has served well for so long. The objective of the fees reform is legitimate and should not be abandoned, but in the context of the wider structural flaws in the legal system, it is relatively marginal. The Minister still has time to show he has the stomach to take on those bigger reforms.

Both sides have claimed they are willing to sit down and discuss the narrow issues dividing them. They should do so without further delay, and the solicitors should end their action immediately.