Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 June 2004
143 Mr. O’Connor asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the contacts he has had with the Legal Aid Board in respect of its services in Tallaght, Dublin 24; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18146/04]
View answerAs the Deputy is aware, the Legal Aid Board is examining the possible benefits of relocating some or all of its suburban law centres in Dublin to locations in the city centre to bring them closer to the courts. The Deputy will appreciate that in accordance with good public service management practice, the Legal Aid Board keeps the operation of its law centre network under constant review. About 90% of the board's caseload falls in the area of family law. The legal remedy available in such cases is provided through the courts. When time spent at court consulting with barristers, adjournments, interim applications etc. is taken into account, a situation arises where a significant portion of the time taken to resolve a case, by both client and solicitor, is actually spent at court and not in the law centre.
Where a law centre is remote from the court, a solicitor can spend quite a large portion of his or her time travelling to and from the court and the amount of time involved can be quite considerable. Whereas, if the law centre is close to the court, the solicitor would spend less time travelling and should have more time to deal with a greater number of clients. This would particularly be the case when the court adjourns a case to a later time or date. The time saved would enable the solicitor to deal with other work in the law centre and this should contribute to an improved throughput of cases and reduce the amount of time that applicants to the law centre have to wait for legal services. The client has to travel to court for hearings, consultations with barristers etc. in any event.
Under the terms of the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995, an applicant for legal services may apply to any law centre in the State, regardless of his or her home address. In this regard, applicants from the greater Dublin area may apply for legal services at any of the Dublin law centres most convenient to them. In conclusion, I can inform the Deputy that I have not yet received any concrete proposals in relation to this matter and I would expect that any such proposals would take into account any proposals by the Courts Service in relation to the location of family law court sittings.
