Making it easier to get legal help is only one part of the solution

IN AN environment where the cost of going to court is so high that many types of litigation are beyond the reach of the average person, who can people turn to for justice?

There are a number of potential avenues.

Cash-strapped charities, NGOs and civic society groups can turn to a voluntary assistance scheme operated by the Bar of Ireland, where practitioners provide their services pro bono.

Individuals can also approach lawyers who accept cases on a “no foal, no fee” basis, where practitioners don’t get paid unless the client wins their case and recovers their costs from the other side.

However, this is becoming less common than it used to be.

Then there is the civil legal aid scheme operated by the Legal Aid Board.

While it does much good work in assisting people who could not otherwise afford legal representation, the system of civil legal aid in Ireland is far from comprehensive.

It does not cater for certain types of cases and there are huge waiting lists for appointments at many of its law centres. The financial criteria involved also makes it difficult for many people to qualify.

According to the Law Society, the Legal Aid Board has been under-resourced since 2008, a period when the need for its services has increased significantly.

It dealt with more than 15,000 applications in 2015, compared with just over 10,000 in 2007.

The board recognises that there are a great many others it should be catering for and has pressed the Department to Justice to widen eligibility criteria and to remove requirements for certain clients to contribute towards their legal costs.

But the reality is that fixing these problems is not an answer in itself.

Waiting times for initial appointments at some of the board’s law centres are running at 32 weeks. There are many other centres where waiting times are also unacceptably long.

If eligibility criteria are widened without a substantial increase in resources being made available to the board, these waiting lists will only grow further due to increased demand, creating another barrier to justice.