Justice Minister ‘choking legal aid system’, says Cork solicitor

Cork solicitors have accused justice minister Jim O’Callaghan of acting unilaterally and recklessly in introducing reforms to free legal aid cases, which have seen lawyers leave courthouses across the country en masse.

More than a thousand court cases, primarily in the district court, have been adjourned due to solicitors withdrawing their services from free legal aid panels in protest against the reforms.

Changes to the system have introduced a €520 flat rate given to solicitors for a free legal aid case. Previously, solicitors were given a roughly €240 fee for a first appearance for a client and around €60 for every subsequent sitting.

“The minister hasn’t engaged genuinely with us; he’s choking the criminal legal aid system,” said Cork-based solicitor Thomas Coughlan. 

“He has a monopoly over that entire pillar of work, and he is unilaterally exercising his coercive control over the purse strings of the criminal legal aid system to choke it.”

Mr Coughlan said he understood that all of the about 50 active solicitors on Cork’s criminal legal aid panel have withdrawn from the service. He said the new system would mean solicitors would have to sign up for an “unquantified” amount of work for a flat fee.

“The clients who typically get legal aid have usually lots of issues going on,” he said. “There’s lots of issues in terms of addictions, there’s lots of issues in terms of poor social circumstances and domestic circumstances.

“There’s homelessness, there’s language problems… that all requires time.”

Reduce excessive taxpayer funding

Mr O’Callaghan said the reforms were being introduced to reduce excessive taxpayer funding going towards free legal aid. Expenditure on criminal legal aid in the district court has risen from €19m in 2015 to €41m in 2025, according to the Department of Justice.

Frank Buttimer, who represented the late Ian Bailey in the murder case of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, received €578,000 from legal aid last year.

“It’s not fundamentally about the money, it’s about not even being allowed to participate in the negotiation of your own contract,” said Mr Buttimer.

“It’s unacceptable that the new contract was not presented to us until the day before its intended implementation.”

Mr Buttimer said the reforms functioned as an attack on the legal system, and that blame was being shifted onto the lawyers for adjournments that prolong district court cases.

He said: “I would worry about the way in which there is a rather significant attack upon the method by which justice is administered by attacking a rather important participant in the system, which is the lawyers, the agenda for that is not known to me. He was accusatory towards us, as if we’re gaming the system.”

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the department had been engaging with the Law Society and Bar of Ireland since October 2025 on reforms.

Solicitor Eddie Burke said engagement from the department was never “meaningful”.