I am happy that the Minister has taken the time to come into the House to listen to my plea on behalf of the Coolock Community Law Centre, and to my raising the general point that at this time legal services for the poor in this city are in a dismal condition and are in disarray.
The civil legal aid centres operating under the Government's scheme are inundated with work, so much so that the doors are almost always closed to new customers. The workload carried in these centres is so horrendous that the service is slowly grinding to a halt. It will take a great deal of time and effort to get them moving again. The legal profession must stand condemned. They continue to ignore the vast area of their responsibility to meet legal needs. The profit motive dominates their interest and they are not prepared to meet their social responsibility of delivering a comprehensive service for all people on all issues.
It is now ten years since the Pringle report issued its well though out proposals for the introduction of a comprehensive legal aid service. Since then we have spent very little time considering it. The whole concept of community law centres has not been taken on by any Government in the ten years since that report, centres located in the community, not just in city centre locations, centres that would be active in the immediate environment delivering not just a service of court or lawyer orientation but also an educational service designed to make people aware of their rights and how to tackle issues. Great credit must be given to the people who work in the Government law centres. They are doing trojan work in unbelievable conditions. In any debate on legal services our appreciation of them must be made obvious.
In this whole area of confusion and the disarray in the delivery of legal services for the poor, shines one beacon of example, that is the community law centre in Coolock, a centre and facility that towers above any other service delivered by the entire legal profession, in looking after the needs of poor people. This centre is well know to the Minister and myself as it is located in our constituency. However, since its foundation in 1975 at the behest of students of law in the free legal advice centres services, the centre in Coolock has never operated on a sound financial basis. It has never had a budget on which it could plan. They do not know from one year to the next whether they will be open in the coming months. They never know where the money is to come from. In their history they have received funding from different Departments, even though more recently their budget seems now fixed into the budget of the Combat Poverty Agency. In addition, their current funding is on a limited period of three years from 1987 to 1989 at the sum of £60,000 per annum.
At the moment the centre has an overdraft of about £10,000. The money they have on a yearly basis would just about cover running costs. They have no hope of tackling the overdraft which is daily increasing. Funding is only adequate to employ a secretary administrator, one solicitor and one community officer working in the field, developing the service and developing the whole concept of the centre as a community facility. Against that, the case load for 1986 the last year for which figures are available, show that the solicitor had to deal with 300 new cases in that year alone in addition to carrying on all the work that came from the preceding years. She was obliged to participate in upwards of 300 court appearances involving upwards of two visits a day to court. In reality she is permanently tied up in attending at court looking after the interests of the many beleagured people who come through the doors of the centre. The result is that there is no one at base to carry on the legal professional work that should be done there.
For a number of years the centre has been crying out for funding for at least one additional solicitor. If one considers the service given by Cooklock community law centre and the commitment given by one solicitor there one would not grudge one penny of such increased funding for the appointment of one other solicitor who would have such an incredible impact on the facilities to the people in the North-East area. I refer to the North-East area because that is the constituency of the Minister and myself, but in fact the law centre covers a vastly greater area than one constituency. It covers a catchment area of 30,000 households and serves, without ever telling a person that they are too busy, everyone who knocks on the door. In addition to simple legal service the law centre is a genuine community-based law facility, the kind of idea that Mr. Pringle in his report advocated should be established throughout the country. Nothing has been done to date.
The centre involves itself in delivering leaflets to people in localities advising them of their rights regarding social welfare, consumer matters and other areas of the law often befuddling and confusing to the layman. It is involved in the issuing and publication of newsletters telling the community about what the law centre is doing and what facilities it can offer. It involves itself in the bringing together of groups such as the women's group to help people to work together and deal with common problems that arise, not just in the courts and by reason of the law but in the community generally. It works on ongoing education, to which I have had the privilege of being a party in talking to people about their rights and what way they should go about dealing with the many bureaucracies that confront them in their daily lives as they seek their rights.
The range of service and activity of Coolock Community Law Centre is unparalleled and unequalled by anything that the legal profession, solicitors and barristers together, has ever even contemplated. It is remarkable what that centre does, given the very uncertain and very inadequate base of its funding. It is essential that funding of this law centre is put on a permanent basis, locked into the fund of some or other of the Departments appropriate, be it Welfare or Justice. It is essential that it is increased, however modestly, to enable additional staff of a professional and secretarial nature to be taken on so that it can begin, at least, to breathe a little bit in the work that it is doing.
Of course, in all this, again, the work of the Coolock Community Law Centre cannot be divorced from the work of the free legal advice centres which originally were intended to be disbanded and closed on the publication of the Pringle report and the introduction of the scheme as proposed by Judge Pringle. They saw the achievement of the setting up of that committee as the conclusion and culmination of their years of work and agitation. They hoped that when the Government scheme was introduced it would mean their necessary and obvious demise. Unique probably of any body in the country, they looked forward to the day when they could say that their job was done and would close the door because they were no longer needed. However, within months of the scheme operating under Pringle as introduced by the Government of the day, they realised that it could never meet the legal needs of poor people in the city. Consequently, they reopened their doors.
This body has only once been assisted or funded by Government and that was to help them, with EC moneys, to pay off a huge debt that had accumulated over the years. They are again in a desperate situation. If this body were funded in some way through the Combat Poverty Agency, through the Minister's brief and budget, or through some allocation — I know not where and I dare not mention the word "lottery"— but from whatever source, a sum however small would go a huge way because it would be carried through the hands of the most enthusiastic body of students that one could hope to meet, those who give up their time to sit in centres around the city, upwards of 20 of them, to try to help and supplement the work of Coolock Community Law Centre and the work of the State law centres and to offset the complete negligence of our legal professions in dealing with the needs of poor people.
In this regard it would be wrong to depart without saying a word of commendation to the members of the Bar who recently have agreed by resolution to impose a levy on their more senior members. It is hoped that that levy, when contributed to by the members of the Bar Council, will yield up something in the order of £14,000 per annum to help to part-fund FLAC and its endeavours around the city. I would hope that the solicitors' side of the profession would now respond with at least the sum of £10 per qualified solicitor around the country, and I think there is somewhere in the order of 3,000 of them. That would easly fund the activities of FLAC and see that in some way the adequate service that the legal profession provide would be made up by the endeavours of students working through FLAC. That sum of £10 per member of the Law Society would yield, at the moment, in the order of £30,000. It would be very little out of the pocket of the individual solicitor but would mean so much to the service that is being provided.
A sure funding base for Coolock Community Law Centre and the vibrant work of the students in the FLAC centre would go a huge distance in improving the quality of service to poor people in trying to deal with their problems in coming to court throughout this city and, indeed, the country. It would take a great amount of pressure off the law centres themselves. It would give people an opportunity of catching up on work; it would mean that a proper service of some sort was being delivered to those who need it and at the end of the day, for very little, if the leadership or lead were given from the Minister's Department, or whoever within Government, to put some money on a solid permanent basis in the way of Cooklock Community Law Centre, I believe that the solicitors' profession would respond. The Bar have already committed themselves and by this response from all quarters we could go a very long way for very little in providing a much improved voluntary service for people who so badly need the assistance of people like Mary Kiely in Coolock Community Law Centre and the students who work in FLAC.
I am making a very strong and earnest plea to the Minister to realise that that centre — despite the generous effort, as I am sure he will call it, of £60,000 per annum — is on the brink of extinction unless its overdraft problem is dealt with, unless it is given extra staff to deal with the huge workload. It will not be able to carry the worry and burden much longer. In paying homage to the work these people have done, as a representative in their area I hope the Minister can respond in a magnanimous way. From this we could go on, through both arms of the profession, to see FLAC restored to viability, the service overall improved and pressure taken off the law centres. I await the Minister's answer.
