(Carlow-Kilkenny): Táim an-bhíoch gur tugadh deis dom an fhadhb seo a phlé anseo anocht.
I must express my disappointment that the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment and Local Government, for the third time this evening, is representing the Minister to whose Department a matter applies. However, I accept that Ministers are very busy. Under the system we use for matters taken on the Adjournment, the Minister of State will have in his possession a script written by a civil servant this afternoon. I hope I am a Member of the Dáil when this sytem is changed and a more realistic one put in its place.
I raise the absence of a full-time solicitor in the Carlow legal aid centre. There is no legal aid service in Carlow. The county is linked with Kilkenny and while that forms a very successful political unit it is not successful with regard to legal aid. We are visited by an overworked solicitor from Kilkenny twice every month – not once a week but two days every month. That is classed as a legal aid service.
I have no doubt the Minister of State's script will compare this with similar delays in other parts of the country and claim that Carlow is no worse than other places. Were it not for the fact that five solicitors give their time freely and free of charge to help people who need legal advice the queue would be three or four times longer. Furthermore, when people who need legal aid discover that a solicitor visits the centre only twice a month they somehow manage to consult a solicitor privately. There is no service in Carlow. The delay is minimised only for the reasons I have just given.
Despite the lack of service the centre had 333 queries between January and July 2000. During all of 1999 there were 400. The number of queries is rising. This may be explained by the fact that Carlow is the fastest growing centre of population outside Dublin as was shown in a recent engineers' association report. A fast growing centre of population will always have problems.
I hope the Minister of State's script includes a definite commitment to provide a legal aid service to Carlow. This means providing a full-time solicitor. A visit by a solicitor twice a month is not a service. I look forward with hope to the Minister of State's reply.