Lawyer says projected record spend of €120.5m on criminal legal aid in 2025

Gordon Deegan

A senior lawyer has stated that the projected record Government spend of €120.5 million on criminal legal aid for 2025 “is not some kind of bonanza for criminal lawyers whose work is largely vocational”.

Dublin-based lawyer, Michael Hennessy, was the top earning solicitor on the Criminal Legal Aid Panel in 2024 when he received €842,221 (incl VAT) and was commenting on official Department of Justice projections that the spend on criminal legal aid this year rise to a record €120.5 million.

This follows the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, recently seeking an additional €21.5 million in a supplementary estimate to fund criminal legal aid this year.

The Department originally set aside €99.04 million to fund the criminal legal aid system in 2025 where the vast bulk of that amount is spent on lawyers’ fees, and Minister O’Callaghan requested the background of the spending on criminal legal aid increasing by 30pc year on year for the first nine months.

Figures provided by the Department of Justice show that the criminal legal aid spent to the end of September was €87.76 million and this was a €20 million - or 29.6 per cent - increase on the €67.68 million spent for the corresponding period in 2024.

The monthly breakdown shows that €13.37 million was spent on criminal legal aid in July alone, compared to a spend of €9.02 million in July 2024, while the spend in May 2025 totalled €12.14 million compared to an outlay of €10.89 million in May 2024.

The projected €120.5 million outlay on criminal legal aid follows lawyers in January of this year securing an 8 per cent increase in the fees paid to barristers and solicitors.

This came after the Government allocated in Budget 2025 an additional €9 million in fees paid under the Criminal Legal Aid scheme after barristers withdrew their labour in days of protest at the criminal courts last year in protest at the failure by the Government to restore a 10 per cent cut in rates imposed in 2011.

In 2024, solicitors and barristers on the criminal legal aid scheme received €84.08 million in fees which was down marginally on the then record €84.9 million paid out in 2023.

The overall spend on criminal legal aid for 2024 - which also includes the funding of expert court reports - totalled €89.45 million.

Commenting on the increased criminal legal aid spend for 2025, lawyer Michael Hennessy said: “The increase in the spend is not some kind of bonanza for criminal lawyers whose work is largely vocational and who are paid at an infinitely lower rate than colleagues in other legal areas."

"Rather it is reflective of the sheer number of people coming before the courts as evidenced by the appointment of additional judges, daily reports of prison overcrowding and the increased prosecution of new types of offences for instance those arising from social media and online fraud, while old problems such as homelessness, mental health, drugs and marital breakdown seem only to have worsened.”

Asked about the increase, a Department of Justice spokesman said that the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme is demand-led.

He said that there has been a significant increase in the granting of legal aid over the past number of years and a corresponding increase in expenditure.

He said that the “increases in the complexity and amount of disclosure which needs to be reviewed in criminal cases and the number of legal aid certificates granted have had a significant impact on criminal legal aid expenditure”.