I welcome this opportunity to speak to Seanad Éireann and exchange views on the operation of the civil legal aid service provided by the Legal Aid Board. I will be listening carefully to contributions made by Senators and expect that this discussion will ensure that we are better informed on the situation with regard to the Legal Aid Board.
I congratulate the Legal Aid Board on the production and content of its annual report for 1997. I am sure Senators will agree that the publication is attractive in appearance and laid out in a clear and informative manner, with a useful and a detailed index. Most importantly, it is full of meaningful information on the services provided by the board, and relevant statistical information presented in an easily understood manner. It is a model of clarity which other bodies could emulate when producing annual reports.
The Legal Aid Board was established in 1979 to administer the scheme of civil legal aid and advice. It provided a legal service in civil matters to people with limited means and operated on an administrative basis until 11 October 1996 when the Civil Legal Aid Act, 1995, was brought into effect. Under the Act, as under the scheme, persons who are provided with legal services are required to pay a contribution related to their income. In many cases, this contribution amounts to £4 for legal advice and £23 for representation in court, although it can be increased where costs or damages are awarded in favour of its client. In accordance with the terms of the 1995 Act, the Legal Aid Board has the power to waive or reduce the contribution that a client may be required to pay.
The seminal years of the Legal Aid Board coincided with a serious economic recession and, accordingly, development was slow. Between 1979 and 1992 the board opened 16 law centres. When the Fianna Fáil led Government took office in late 1992, the board was preparing to open its 16th law centre. Conscious of the demands which the continuing programme of legislative reform in family law, including proposals for divorce, was making on the board's resources, the Government approved a programme of expansion and development for the Legal Aid Board. When the present Government took office in June 1997 it continued to provide additional resources to the Legal Aid Board, resulting in a board which provides legal services from a nationwide network of 30 law centres. The board has a staff of 261, of which 219 are in the law centres. In 1998 the Exchequer grant will be £9.615 million. This is in stark contrast with the position prior to the Fianna Fáil led Government coming into office in 1992, when the board comprised 15 law centres, 99 staff and had an Exchequer grant of £2.685 million.
As a result of the expansion in the number of law centres and the recruitment of additional solicitors and support staff, there has been a significant increase in the number of persons receiving legal services from the board. In 1997, 7,784 persons received legal advice compared with 3,420 in 1992. In the same period, the number of applicants provided with legal advice and representation in court increased from 1,854 to 6,021. Of the 1997 figures, about 96 per cent of court cases and 90 per cent of legal advice cases were in the family law area. This ratio has remained more or less constant since the establishment of the board.
The board also operated the private practitioner pilot project for six months between October 1993 to March 1994. This project has continued to operate in the Dublin area since April 1994. Under the project, it is open to persons granted legal aid certificates to choose a solicitor from a panel for representation in the District Court in respect of barring orders, maintenance, safety, access, guardianship and custody cases. In 1997, 862 people granted legal aid certificates availed of the private practitioner pilot project, a significant increase on the 1996 total of 655 certificates. The board expects to be in a position to extend the scheme nationwide in the near future.
The significant increases in the resources allocated to the Legal Aid Board in recent years have facilitated the development of a nationwide civil legal aid service. However, these developments have been outstripped by the increase in the number of people requesting the services of the board. This has placed a very heavy demand on the board and has resulted in increasing delays in waiting times for appointments with solicitors. This fact is evident at many of the board's law centres. The situation has been compounded by the increasing complexity of many classes of cases, especially child care cases, and a consequential increase in the proportion of cases being heard in the higher courts.
While there are a number of factors involved, the main reasons for the increase in demand relate to the rapid pace of sociological change over recent years. This has resulted in an increase in the number of families experiencing problems, less reluctance than heretofore on the part of both women and men to acknowledge these difficulties and to seek redress, frequently by recourse to the courts.
Since the Judicial Separation and Family Law Reform Act, 1989, there has been a significant increase in the number of legal reliefs and remedies available to people who are experiencing difficulties in their relationships. Accordingly, the increase in waiting times at the board's law centres can be attributed to a significant degree to the continuing increase in the level of demand on the board's services arising from the introduction in recent years of such additional family law legislation. The Domestic Violence Act, 1996, and the Family Law (Divorce) Act, 1996, are two of the most important pieces of this new legislation.
The Domestic Violence Act, which was introduced on 27 March 1996, strengthened the power of the courts to make orders for the protection of persons in the home whose safety or welfare requires it. Also, it extended that protection to co-habitees and parents. The Family Law (Divorce) Act, 1997, which came into operation on the 27 February 1997 had an immediate impact on the board. When that Act came into force, 1,062 persons sought the board's assistance in relation to divorce proceedings and had their names placed on waiting lists. During the remainder of 1997, a further 1,113 people sought services from the Legal Aid Board for divorce proceedings. Of these, 2,175 people, 957 were on waiting lists at the end of the year while of the 1,146 applications for legal aid certificates relating to divorce proceedings received in the board's head office, 938 were granted.
Conscious of the deteriorating situation with regard to waiting lists at the law centres, in July 1998 Minister O'Donoghue approved 25 additional posts for the Legal Aid Board. Of these, 17 posts, including five solicitor posts, are for the law centres. In addition, he sanctioned the making permanent of six temporary staff in the law centres, three relief solicitors and three clerical officers, and the engagement on a temporary basis of a librarian for head office. I am confident that these additional staff will be allocated by the Legal Aid Board in such a manner as to make the greatest impact on waiting times at the board's law centres.
The high incidence of marriage breakdown illustrated by these statistics gives cause for concern, both in financial and human terms, because when a marriage breaks down, children of the marriage are very vulnerable to consequential damage. Such damage is particularly likely where the marriage has ended in bitterness or where the children do not have a continuing relationship with both parents. As I have already intimated, changes in the social climate in Ireland over recent years, characterised in terms of increased openness of public discussion and changed social behaviour, have contributed to an increase in awareness among people that society no longer demands that couples should continue in an unsatisfactory, unequal or abusive relationship. Victims of previously unmentioned and hidden abuses, such as domestic violence, incest and rape, are aware that concern for their plight is shared by community and State. Both are sympathetic to their plight and are involved, separately and collectively, in attempting to alleviate their situation. In this regard, since 1989, this House has passed a significant volume of legislation extending the range of remedies available to members of families experiencing difficulties in their relationships and providing for easier access to those remedies. This has had a major impact on the demand for the legal services of the board.
Conscious of the vulnerability of the family members caught up in such proceedings, and in particular children, more recent legislation has directed people towards counselling and mediation as a means of resolving their marital difficulties, as an alternative to availing of the adversarial judicial systems. Examples of this are to be found in the 1989 Judicial Separation and Family Law Reform Act, the 1997 Family Law (Divorce) Act and the recent 1997 Children Act, all of which contain provisions requiring that applicants seeking relief under one or other of these Acts would be advised of the availability of counselling and of mediation. The hope is that by these means the integrity of the family unit would be preserved, notwithstanding difficulty and breakdown in marriage relationships.
A committee was also established by my Department to co-ordinate services for marriage support and marriage breakdown. The Legal Aid Board participates fully in this committee. In relation to mediation, the board has actively encouraged its solicitors to consider whether cases are appropriate for mediation. Of course, solicitors are required by the terms of the relevant legislation to advise clients of a range of matters including availability of counselling and mediation. In pursuit of this objective, the board arranged for the head of the Family Mediation Service, which provides mediation services to separating couples, to speak to its solicitors and law clerks in relation to the availability of its services and the types of cases which are most appropriate for mediation. When the Family Mediation Service opened its permanent office in Limerick, the board also arranged for a special regional meeting to be held with its solicitors in order to promote the use of mediation. Following from this meeting, the solicitor in the Tralee law centre encouraged the setting up of a mediation clinic in the Tralee area and this is serviced from the Limerick family mediation centre. I understand from the board this is working in a most satisfactory manner.
The Civil Legal Aid Act, 1995, and its predecessor, the Scheme of Civil Legal Aid and Advice, provides that certain criteria must be met before a person will qualify for legal aid. The most important of these are the means and merits tests. With regard to the former, there is a statutory requirement that a person must have a disposable income of under £7,350 per annum before he or she will qualify for legal services under the 1995 Act. Disposable income is defined as the income that remains after various deductions have been made in respect of dependants, mortgage/rent, income tax, social insurance and such like that are incumbent upon a person to pay. An applicant with such a disposable income would be obliged to pay the maximum contribution while a person with a disposable income of £5,060 or less per annum would be obliged to pay the minimum contribution totalling £27. I refer Senators to pages 42 and 43 of the board's annual report which give a clear definition of what is required of an applicant in order to qualify for the services of the board.
A person applying for legal services from the board must also satisfy a merits test with regard to the nature of the case he or she wishes to pursue. Basically, this means that the person concerned must have a case that is sustainable and be reasonably likely to be successful in the court proceedings. Obviously, it would be a waste of the board's resources to pursue an action which has little chance of success or where, if successful, the benefit accruing to the successful aided person was of nugatory dimensions. Where the board refuses to provide a person with legal services on whatever grounds, that person may appeal the decision to a committee of the board.
The board recognises that certain cases will have an urgency attaching to them which is not present in all cases. Therefore, as a matter of policy, it has directed its staff to provide applicants with priority in certain classes of cases. The following is a list of cases falling into this priority category, which is of general application throughout the law centres: child abduction proceedings; circumstances where there is a real danger of children being taken out of the jurisdiction without the consent of the applicant; child care proceedings; domestic violence; where, under the Statute of Limitations, there is a danger of the time limits for issuing proceedings expiring unless immediate action is taken; where there is a danger of time limits in other legislation expiring; where there is a danger that assets may be dissipated so that they would be unavailable to meet the claims of the applicant and, District Court appeals, where the case has been dealt with under the private practitioner project which is run by the board. A substantial number of appointments are given each month on a priority basis. For example, 165 of the 910 appointments offered in law centres in September 1998 were for priority matters. None of those accorded priority was put on waiting lists.
I hope the circumstances I have outlined will be of assistance to Senators in developing a broad understanding of issues in relation to the Legal Aid Board. I thank Senators for this opportunity to address them on this important issue and I look forward to hearing their statements on the matter.