Legal Aid Board struggles with asylum-seeker influx
Dealing with a huge rise in cases involving asylum seekers has pushed the Legal Aid Board (LAB) towards closing some of its centres, the Irish Daily Mail has reported today.
The newspaper reports that the Legal Aid Board has told the Department of Justice it is running €1.3million over budget and faces closing some of its centres because of the influx of cases involving asylum seekers.
Asylum rates have risen from around 3,600 in 2018 to over 18,500 last year.
The Department of Justice has been told in a series of letters that the LAB has difficulty in retaining solicitors and its staff suffer from low morale because of work overload.
Solicitors losing money
Some solicitors are losing money by providing asylum-seekers with legal counsel, the newspaper reports, making recruitment and retention difficult.
The LAB wrote to the Department of Justice in February saying that despite an increase in its allocation, it was running at least €1million over budget, which the board said was a matter of “significant concern,” the Daily Mail reports.
In later correspondence, chief executive Joan Crawford told the department that LAB would have a 2025 pay bill of at least €33.5million, despite only having an allocation of €32.4million for pay.
There are currently 34 vacancies at the Legal Aid Board, the report adds.