There is no such classification in Ireland.
Can someone explain what the Minister O'Callaghan - Law Society standoff is all about?
- Thread starter trajan
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Turning into an absolute mess. Does the minister engage his brain at all before ramming through a change like this?
And the judge here, who doesnt have to worry about the connection between effort and remuneration, similarly detached from reality.
www.thejournal.ie
And the judge here, who doesnt have to worry about the connection between effort and remuneration, similarly detached from reality.
Judge criticises 'inappropriate' withdrawal of representation for murder conspirator
Mr Justice Paul McDermott made the remark after hearing that Jason Dunne (35) was not represented in court due to the ongoing dispute over legal aid fees.
www.thejournal.ie
I'm aware of that but people are more familiar with that term rather than describing them as Schedule 1 drugs.
From the information available this looks like extremely unprofessional and unethical behaviour by the Solicitors involved. When hospital porters go on strike they ensure that critical functions are maintained. It seems that the legal industry doesn't hold themselves to the same standards as Hospital Porters.
If you had signed for a job, on the basis of one payment agreement, and then halfway through the person who hired you unliterally says I'm not going to pay you anymore no matter how long it takes or cover your costs to hand it over to another party.
Would you continue working on it for free?
If the Minister & Department changed the payment process for in progress cases then the unprofessional and unethical behaviour is with them.
Except that is not what happened. The reforms apply to cases in which Criminal Legal Aid was granted after the 1st of July. This was a sentencing hearing in a murder trial. There's no way the accused was only granted legal aid (or, to be precise, was granted A Criminal Legal Aid Certificate) a month ago. Therefore the old appearance based payment system still applied to this case.
I'd describe it as ham-fisted and inept rather than unethical and unprofessional.
JoeRoberts
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Its a rare thing to see the Govt standing its ground against the legal profession.
Changing times.
Changing times.
Any time they tried it before they got chewed up and spat out.
The Civil Service and the Legal Industry and the permanent powers within this country. They are, in many ways, to the the Government here what the Guardian Council is to the Government in Iran.
I expect that this happens within the context of normal industrial relations negotiations prior to industrial action. The solicitors have no such mechanisms available to them. The closest they have is the Law Society, with whom the Minister point blank refused to engage (but they have no status in terms of Industrial relations processes and there are no such mechanisms applicable).
In the early stages of this protest, many solicitors continued to deal with custody cases (an approximate analogy to "essential services" I suppose) but when the Minister doubled down, so did most solicitors. Again, I have to say, 100%% the Minister....
I can see your point about existing cases, but I don't think it is feasible. The only way that legal aid works at all ( in terms of financial viability) is if you have a constant stream of cases. I am not 100% comfortable saying this - but on balance I don't think that full- time criminal practitioners have an obligation. If they do, it would mean they have to come to come to court next week for 60% of their normal revenue, then 50% in 2 weeks and eventually tailing down to 5% over the course of many months as "old system" cases work through to conclusions. They can't sustain that. So they need to redeploy and earn a living elsewhere.
From today's Irish Times
"A recent Department of Justice review of the criminal legal scheme said the regulation permitting additional legal aid certificates for “good reason” allowed solicitors to “maximise” earnings in ways not envisaged by the original legislation.
The overall number of cases involving multiple legal aid certificates for a single accused had “increased dramatically”, and the regulation had become a “major issue”, placing “strain” on the legal aid budget.
The department says the cost of the criminal legal aid scheme for the District Court increased from €19.3 million in 2015 to €40.7 million last year."
"Letterkenny District Court approved 70 certificates for a person charged with at least 70 theft offences last spring and 56 for another individual accused of multiple theft counts last year."
It seems that there is a cohort of solicitors who are gaming the system. Given human nature is what it is, it is inevitable that a minority of people in any sector are dishonest.
"A recent Department of Justice review of the criminal legal scheme said the regulation permitting additional legal aid certificates for “good reason” allowed solicitors to “maximise” earnings in ways not envisaged by the original legislation.
The overall number of cases involving multiple legal aid certificates for a single accused had “increased dramatically”, and the regulation had become a “major issue”, placing “strain” on the legal aid budget.
The department says the cost of the criminal legal aid scheme for the District Court increased from €19.3 million in 2015 to €40.7 million last year."
"Letterkenny District Court approved 70 certificates for a person charged with at least 70 theft offences last spring and 56 for another individual accused of multiple theft counts last year."
It seems that there is a cohort of solicitors who are gaming the system. Given human nature is what it is, it is inevitable that a minority of people in any sector are dishonest.
That's a good question. The answer to the lack of enforcement of laws seems to be more laws. This is the same sort of thing. It's yet another example of the utter inability of the State Sector to regulate the Private Sector.
I have no personal knowledge of this case (nor indeed of this sort of thing happening) but would make the following observations:
1) Despite the line of guff from the Minister and his Civil Servants the payment is not simply for standing up in court on a single day. If there are 70 separate alleged offences, there may well be 70 different victims and 70 different sets of disclosure (i.e. the State evidence).
2) I grant you, certainly, that there is a case to be made for tailing off payments in such a situation. There are some modest economies of scale. But this Minister says whether you have to review 1 set of witness statements or 100, you will get just one payment.
In a worst case scenario, imagine they provide 20x witness statements and 20x CCTV evidence for 20 different offences.
Call it 20 minutes per disc, and 20 minutes per statement, including discussion with your addicted or otherwise vulnerable client. You now have 14 + hours of work outside of the court itself.
That plus at least two days in court for €520?? Not a chance of this being viable. 20 legal aid certs at 20x €240 + 20x €50 would absolutely be needed to make this work as a business model. That is not gaming the system.
3) The optimal solution, it seems to me, is that somewhere around 8 or 10 charges the prosecuting guards might say "actually, that is enough to procure justice".
4) There is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion. They are not obliged to prosecute every single offence.
5) Conversely, there is no discretion for a defence solicitor. I cannot say, after reviewing the first 8 cases:
" Ah screw it. Odds are this punter will go down in all 70 cases. I won't bother reviewing the rest of this".
(I am not saying that this never happens. But it definitely shouldn't.)
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A final word (promise!) on this issue.
(1) It is politically expedient for an ambitious Minister to be seen to take on the Mighty Vested Interests of the Legal Profession.
(2) There are more than 12,000 Solicitors in practice.
(3) There were circa 800 solicitors on the legal aid panel ( that number is dropping) and probably no more than 300 of those making a living (or a reasonable proportion of their living) from criminal legal aid.
This dispute can accurately be characterised as the Minister picking as a target a small cohort of lawyers - less than 3% of solicitors in practice.
Any press releases or coverage which seek to characterise this as the Minister somehow 'taking on the legal profession' are at best misguided.
(1) It is politically expedient for an ambitious Minister to be seen to take on the Mighty Vested Interests of the Legal Profession.
(2) There are more than 12,000 Solicitors in practice.
(3) There were circa 800 solicitors on the legal aid panel ( that number is dropping) and probably no more than 300 of those making a living (or a reasonable proportion of their living) from criminal legal aid.
This dispute can accurately be characterised as the Minister picking as a target a small cohort of lawyers - less than 3% of solicitors in practice.
Any press releases or coverage which seek to characterise this as the Minister somehow 'taking on the legal profession' are at best misguided.
We have 3.3 Judges per 100,000 people. The EU average is 17.6... but we have around twice the EU average number of lawyers per capita. That judicial bottleneck is probably a far bigger factor in high legal costs, and delays, than the cost of legal aid.
The problem is that few suitable candidates want to be Judges due to a high workload and a relatively poor salary, not to mention that it's a difficult and stressful job. Rather than addressing that, with all the inherent problems of interwoven Public Sector pay scales and lack of specialised Courts at District level, it's easier to go after the low hanging fruit.
Some tweaks announced, unclear if this will be enough:
The flat fee model would remain in place, but said he had agreed to have the payment split to ensure solicitors are paid two thirds of the fee at the beginning of a case, with the remaining one third at the end of proceedings or 12 months later.
Solicitors had raised concerns that there was no guarantee of payment under the new scheme which proposed payment at the completion of cases...
He also said the new scheme would allow for separate payments for the same accused where new charges arise and are separate from previous court appearances.
www.rte.ie
The flat fee model would remain in place, but said he had agreed to have the payment split to ensure solicitors are paid two thirds of the fee at the beginning of a case, with the remaining one third at the end of proceedings or 12 months later.
Solicitors had raised concerns that there was no guarantee of payment under the new scheme which proposed payment at the completion of cases...
He also said the new scheme would allow for separate payments for the same accused where new charges arise and are separate from previous court appearances.
Minister makes changes aimed at ending solicitor dispute
The Minister for Justice has announced changes to the controversial new criminal legal aid scheme at the centre of a solicitors' dispute.