Seán Barrett
Question:39 Mr. Barrett asked the Minister for Justice the average delay in the payment of claims for legal aid fees from the time claims are lodged in court offices.
Written Answers. - Legal Aid Fees.
There are two separate aspects in the procedure for the payment of criminal legal aid claims. Initially, claims are lodged with the relevant court office for certification. They are then passed to my Department to be processed and paid.
In so far as court offices are concerned the information sought is not readily available. Any exercise to compile the information in court offices could only be undertaken by assigning a disproportionate number of staff to the task at the expense of other more important tasks, which would cause delays in court business. In addition, if such exercise were to produce meaningful statistics, it would have to be undertaken over a period of time to take account of variable circumstances such as workload and available resources.
With regard to the time taken to process claims in my Department, the current position is that they are paid within six to eight weeks of receipt. Where queries arise on claims the time taken would, of course, be longer.