{"id":674708,"date":"2026-11-04T12:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T12:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/674708\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T12:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T12:36:09","slug":"the-grim-reality-of-legal-costs-and-the-healthcare-budget-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/674708\/","title":{"rendered":"The grim reality of legal costs and the healthcare budget \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sir, \u2013 Mary Carolan correctly highlights the large sums being paid in legal costs by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/state-claims-agency\/2\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/state-claims-agency\/2\/\">State Claims Agency<\/a> (\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/crime-law\/courts\/2026\/10\/31\/ocallaghan-focusing-on-reforms-that-are-emphatically-not-at-the-lucrative-end-of-legal-practice\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/crime-law\/courts\/2026\/10\/31\/ocallaghan-focusing-on-reforms-that-are-emphatically-not-at-the-lucrative-end-of-legal-practice\/\">The woman facing \u20ac50k legal costs over a \u20ac16.5k claim: Legal aid row highlights issues in other Irish courts\u201d<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/crime-law\/courts\/2026\/10\/31\/ocallaghan-focusing-on-reforms-that-are-emphatically-not-at-the-lucrative-end-of-legal-practice\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/crime-law\/courts\/2026\/10\/31\/ocallaghan-focusing-on-reforms-that-are-emphatically-not-at-the-lucrative-end-of-legal-practice\/\"> <\/a>October 31st) as being as equally ripe for reform as the criminal legal aid system is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Legal expenditure on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/healthcare\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/healthcare\/\">healthcare<\/a>-related claims, such as the \u20ac12 million paid to two solicitor firms in 2025, comes from the overall health budget. To provide context, \u20ac12 million in a year would pay for homecare packages for 1,000 older people, or 125 full-time palliative care nurses. As legal fees rise inexorably, less public money goes on addressing patient safety and care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">When healthcare budgets are announced, the public assumes the money goes straight to the frontline. A transparent breakdown of spending would expose a grim reality: millions of euros are being diverted from bedsores to briefs, and from care to the courts. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Only when the rising tide of legal expenditure is laid bare alongside dwindling frontline resources will we get the political impetus for change. It is time to redirect the flow of public money away from the Four Courts and back to the clinic, where it belongs. \u2013 Yours, etc,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">SUZANNE CROWE,<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ranelagh, <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Dublin 6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir, \u2013 Mary Carolan correctly highlights the large sums being paid in legal costs by the State Claims&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60,85091],"class_list":["post-674708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-state-claims-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674708","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=674708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}