Mr. Philip O'Leary:

I am the chairperson of the Legal Aid Board. I see the function of the statutory board as trying to be forward looking about what we can do in the future and not just repeating what we have been doing over the 40 years, during which there has been very good work. We are trying to look at other areas. Access to justice is not all about access to the courts. We are trying to improve the mediation service. We are trying to improve co-location and are looking at opening a co-location office in Letterkenny next year. These are new, innovative ways of trying to get people to access justice and they are very important. I do not want to harp on about resources all the time but it is very difficult to make progress in new areas. One of those areas is education and telling people about their rights and how to access those rights. FLAC does a fantastic job in that arena. We are hamstrung to a significant extent because we are trying to deal with the current demands on our service and staff. The staff are stretched, including professional staff, mediators, solicitors and administrative staff. We deal with people who are often at a very vulnerable time of their lives when they are under extreme pressure. If it is a case that Tusla is trying to take a person's child from that person and we are the first-line defenders, that is a traumatic situation. Ms Ryan might be able to talk about that more than me with regard to the actual situation on the ground. That is what we deal with daily and where our oxygen goes most of the time. We do not have much left in the tank with regard to other innovations that I and the board would like to pursue for access to justice.