THE JUSTICE MINISTER has said remuneration for criminal work has improved since he was a barrister, and defended his comments about avoiding it in the past because it \u2018doesn\u2019t pay\u2019.<\/p>\n
Solicitors took issue with the remarks made at an Oireachtas committee meeting, as they\u2019re in the midst of a protracted row with the Department of Justice over the new flat fee system.<\/p>\n
It means they will earn a flat fee regardless of how many appearances are involved in a case.<\/p>\n
Jim O\u2019Callaghan told RT\u00c9 Radio One\u2019s Morning Ireland that he\u2019s \u201cnot trying to be antagonistic\u201d towards solicitors\u2019 financial interests, but rather he is trying to improve the justice system for the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started as a barrister 30 years ago, it was the case that criminal work wasn\u2019t paid very well at the bar,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has now changed significantly, and as you can see from the criminal legal aid lists that are published for solicitors and indeed barristers, it is now a well remunerated system, and I welcome that.\u201d<\/p>\n
To protest the changes, solicitors stopped providing the legal aid service, leading to the adjournment of many cases. They now are set to halt all work in the Dublin District Court, Circuit Court and the Central Criminal Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Callaghan said he \u2018regrets\u2019 that there is a row, but he has no intention of reversing the reforms.<\/p>\n
He said that while he\u2019s \u201cnot accusing solicitors of anything\u201d, but he wants to disincentivise adjournments.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it is the case that somebody is being paid on the basis of adjournments \u2013 every time a case is adjourned you get paid more \u2013 inevitably, applications for adjournments are going to increase, and people are going to not object to adjournments if they\u2019re being applied for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Law Society, which represents solicitors, hasn\u2019t asked to meet with the Department since the changes came in, O\u2019Callaghan said.<\/p>\n
Several meetings took place in the lead up to the changes, and O\u2019Callaghan says he has \u201cno difficulty\u201d meeting again if they ask.<\/p>\n
He said he would consider looking at the structure of the flat fee, as solicitors took issue with it only being paid at the end of a case.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE JUSTICE MINISTER has said remuneration for criminal work has improved since he was a barrister, and defended…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9691,42,60,30379,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-564077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-department-of-justice","tag-headlines","tag-ireland","tag-jim-o","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}