The poor see the law as ‘a weapon used against them’
The volume of unmet legal needs in Ireland is unknown, Eilis Barry of FLAC told the Law Society-sponsored Access to Justice conference on Saturday (2 October).
鈥淗istorically, legal services and the legal education sectors have placed very little emphasis on the importance of an evidence-based approach to the design and delivery of services,鈥 Barry said.
She added that there was something 鈥渄eeply uncomfortable鈥 about having a state-of-the-art commercial court, in comparative luxury, compared with the completely overstretched family-law and District Courts.
鈥淩esearch is vital to help us understand where our legal needs are,鈥 she added.
Commonly experienced legal problems can coalesce into clusters, Barry continued, with one problem snowballing into another.
Messy
鈥淔or many people living in disadvantage, their legal problems are multiple, inter-connected, and messy,鈥 she said.
鈥淧eople living with disadvantage are constantly involved with the law, in its most intrusive form,鈥 she added.
FLAC has always maintained that access to justice is a continuum of issues, and includes information, legal advice, advocacy, access to the courts and to effective remedies, and fair and just laws, she said.
Priority
Broadening accessibility to legal information and advice should be a 'number-one' priority, especially in family and employment law, the FLAC chief executive said.
However, financial limits to legal aid, and a strict means test, implies that those with legal problems often have no hope of engaging a solicitor.
Senior counsel Turlough O鈥橠onnell told the conference that some system users were unaware that there were legal solutions to their problems.
鈥淭hey don鈥檛 actually, in my view, believe that they have rights; that鈥檚 how bad it is,鈥 he said.
鈥淎 middle-class person finds it very easy to talk to a lawyer, and has an understanding of the rights the law will provide."
鈥淪omeone in dire need doesn鈥檛 have that confidence,鈥 he said.
The Bar Council鈥檚 pro-bono Voluntary Assistance Scheme, established in 2004, attempts to tackle that issue, but also has an enduring and ongoing conversation with the voluntary sector about how to access courts, and the best means of advocating a case.
鈥淚t鈥檚 our effort to converse with people who find it very difficult to converse with lawyers," the barrister said.
Gary Lee (managing solicitor at Ballymun Community Law Centre) said that, for many years, Ballymun in Dublin had no solicitor at all, for a population of 22,000 people.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 a serious barrier to accessing the courts,鈥 he said.
The Ballymun centre provides quality legal advice in areas not covered by the civil legal-aid scheme, such as housing, social welfare, and health matters.
Employment-law queries
鈥淪ince the pandemic started, we鈥檝e got an awful lot of employment-law related queries as well,鈥 Lee noted.
Some 70% of the centre鈥檚 clients have physical, sensory, or mental-health difficulty, or may have multiple disabilities, and a substantial number live below the poverty line, he added.
Some clients have been removed from the social-welfare housing waiting list while being treated in hospital, Lee said.
Rather than viewing the law as a weapon they can use, it鈥檚 seen as a weapon being used against his clients, he continued.
鈥淲e need to get the message out that the law can be a friend that you can trust,鈥 the solicitor said.