Ms Eilis Barry:

No research has been done to date. People contact FLAC with a variety of legal issues and, if we were to solve them all, there would be an obvious and considerable personal gain for those people but if housing and homelessness can be solved, it will have a positive impact on these people's social inclusion and the cost to the State. We are very anxious that it would be seen as necessary and critical to social inclusion that we target all of people's problems rather than just family law, as the Legal Aid Board does very effectively. It does not make sense to us that the board is not also able to represent people in their social welfare appeals, or their eviction if that is happening at the same time. Limiting action to a particular part of the problem is not the best use of our limited resources.