I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £1,215,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1981 for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Justice, and of certain other services administered by that Office, and of the Public Record Office, and of the Keeper of State Papers and for the purchase of historical documents, etc., and for payment of a grant-in-aid.
With the permission of the Ceann Comhairle I would propose to discuss the Supplementary Estimates for the Office of the Minister for Justice, the Garda Síochána and Prisons together on this Vote.
The Supplementary Estimate for the Office of the Minister for Justice is required to meet additional expenditure on seven subheads of the Vote — salaries, wages and allowances, travelling and incidental expenses, office machinery and other office supplies, Post Office services, commissions and special inquiries, criminal legal aid and compensation for personal injuries criminally inflicted.
The total estimated additional expenditure amounts to £1,314,000 but £99,000 approximately of this can be met from savings elsewhere on the Vote. The net additional sum now sought in this Supplementary Estimate is accordingly £1,125,000.
An additional sum of £134,000 is required in respect of Subhead A.1. — Salaries, Wages and Expenses. The additional amount required is almost entirely due to pay increases authorised since the 1981 Estimates were approved.
A sum of £92,000 is required in respect of Subhead B.1. — Travelling and Incidental Expenses. Most of this amount arises on travelling expenses because of increases in travelling and subsistence costs and to some extent because insufficient provision was made for the travelling expenses.
There will be additional expenditure of £4,000 in respect of Subhead B.2. — Office machinery and other office supplies. The additional amount required is due to increased costs.
An additional expenditure of £38,000 is likely to be incurred in respect of Subhead C. — Post Office Services, because of the increases in telephone and teleprinter charges from 1 April 1981.
An additional £2,000 is required in respect of Subhead E. —Commissions and Special Inquiries — in the light of current expenditure levels on this heading. The bulk of this expenditure is in respect of fees paid to members of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal for cases decided by them. It is not possible to predict what claims will be received or dealt with in any year but the indications are that the number of cases which will be disposed of this year will be higher than average.
The original provision under Subhead F.1. — Legal Aid (Criminal) was £770,000. The additional amount now estimated to be required is £160,000. Deputies will be aware that the criminal legal aid scheme has developed considerably over the years since it was introduced in 1965. Initially there was some dissatisfaction with the way in which it was operating and, in 1975, a committee was established by the then Minister for Justice under the chairmanship of District Justice Tormey with the task or reviewing the operation of the scheme and making recommendations as to the manner in which it might be improved.
The implementations of recommendations made by the Tormey Committee in their first and second interim reports has resulted in improvements in the operation of the scheme. There has, however, been a very sizeable increase in the cost of criminal legal aid which has arisen from £54,000 in 1975 to £773,000 in 1980 and now to an estimated £930,000 in 1981.
An important aspect of this scheme is that I have very little effective control over the principal determinants of expenditure on criminal legal aid. These are, first, the decision by the court to grant legal aid and second, the cost arising from the grant of it in any particular case. Deputies will be aware that the courts alone have discretion to grant criminal legal aid and it would simply not be feasible to limit that discretion without changing the statutory — perhaps even the constitutional — position.
One of the reasons for the increased recourse to legal aid in this and recent years was the Supreme Court judgment of 1976 in the case of the State (Healy) v. Donoghue. Very briefly, the effect of this judgments is that accused persons have a constitutional right to legal aid in certain criminal cases and that, in addition, this right must be brought to an accused person's notice by the district justice before whom he appears initially.
A number of factors have contributed to the high rate of expenditure this year. These include increased recourse generally to legal aid by the courts in disposing of criminal business coming before them and the speedier processing of claims submitted to solicitors and counsel under the scheme. There have also been additional sittings of the Central Criminal Court to deal with a build-up of cases this year which has resulted in an increase in the granting of legal aid by that court in particular. There has also been an increase this year in the fees payable to solicitors for criminal legal aid work in the District Court.
Because of the escalating cost of providing criminal legal aid the Criminal Legal Aid Review Committee, in their final report which was published in September this year, have among their recommendations some suggestions for controlling costs or for providing legal aid through less expensive methods — for example, through the possible introduction of a limited duty solicitor scheme in the busiest District Court areas.
The recommendations in the report are currently under examination in my Department but it has to be mentioned that negotiations and discussions with other interested parties will be necessary before these suggestions can be evaluated and — if warranted — concrete proposals made for amendment of the law.
The original estimate for Subhead G. — Compensation for Personal Injuries Criminally Inflicted was £940,000. This amount has now been expended and from an examination of the claims on hand it is obvious that a further sum of approximately £810,000 will be required before the end of the year.
Claims are processed by an independent tribunal and my Department have no control over the number of applications, the number of cases decided by the tribunal or the amounts of awards made. A further factor is that the size of awards is directly related to awards made in civil cases in the courts and that the size of these awards is constantly increasing.
I now turn to the Supplementary Estimate on the Vote of the Garda Síochána. In summary, a net additional sum of £31,311,000 is needed to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31 December 1981 for the salaries and other expenses of the Garda Síochána.
At the outset, as there are a number of new Deputies in the House, I would like to explain that it is traditional and in accordance with Standing Orders relating to the business of the House, to confine discussion of a supplementary estimate to the items constituting the Estimate. I mention this at this point to explain why it is that the statement I am about to make does not include any general policy statements in relation to the Garda Síochána. However, I expect to avail myself of the opportunity to cover general policy matters when I introduce the Garda Estimates for 1982.
The additional funds required this year are needed to meet extra expenditure arising on the Garda Vote over and above the funds provided in the original Estimate. Before giving the House a detailed break-down of the additional funds required I have first of all to explain that the original Estimate for the Garda Síochána in 1981 was, in one respect at least, not adequate to meet commitments this year.
The public is aware that one of the first takes of the present Government was to conduct an urgent examinations of the country's finances. Following that, the public was told, by means of the Taoiseach's broadcasts on television and radio and by other pronouncements, of the extremely serious condition in which the finances of the State had been left by the outgoing Government. In case some people may not have grasped the full significance of what was happening, I would like just to focus on one aspect of the financial position which I have found in my Department.
One of the principal responsibilities of the Minister for Justice is to make the necessary financial provision to maintain the Garda Síochána and, under that heading, the first and most obvious need is to make the provision necessary to pay the salaries and allowances of the force. I found that realistic estimates which had been prepared of the cost of maintaining the Garda Síochána had been cut and cut again by direction of the then Government until the stage was reached where the money provided was simply not sufficient to meet expected expenditure. I realise that it is easy, in all good faith, to make an error or misjudgment in estimating what will be needed to meet outgoings under various headings but that is not what happened here. What happened was that the figures in the Estimate were not enough to pay the salaries and allowances of the numbers already on the payroll, even on the basis of the pay rates obtaining at the time. The shortfall amounted to over £4 million. It must be remembered that this decision not to provide enough money to pay current salaries was made after an announcement had been made that the numbers on the payroll were to be increased by another 2,000. Far from making any provision to pay for any increase in numbers, the Estimate was, quite simply not enough to cover the basic pay and allowances of the numbers already serving.