Mr. Seán Ó hUallacháin:

I am not suggesting that Deputy Pringle is making a personal attack. I am trying to say that it has to be looked at with regard to wider public interest. The Legal Aid Board performs a difficult function. If I criticise the Legal Aid Board, it is more a criticism of the paymaster, that it needs more resources. The staffing issue has already been identified. It requires financial resources and buildings. This committee has dealt at length with the family law issue and the crying need for the Hammond Lane building, for example. When we deal with Dublin, resources outside of that must be addressed. All of the agencies here and the others that will come before the committee in due course have a role in this regard and we can act as catalysts in the way that we deal with our own client base and how we interact with the Legal Aid Board. This agency is often engaged in firefighting and trying to control a situation. We need to note that in the public interest. If anything is to come out of the deliberations of this committee on legal aid, I hope it would be that there is a crying need for far greater investment. Mr. Ken Murphy has already adverted to the World Bank and International Bar Association survey, and that there are other downstream economic benefits from legal aid. We have also highlighted that in our submission. One cannot take the Legal Aid Board and its responsibilities in isolation any more than one can take costs in isolation. There has to be a holistic picture of how we deal with this and how Irish society develops, not necessarily in the interests of my members but of all of us as a society.