James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is good to know. I have a couple of other points to make but out of respect for the time, I will limit myself to one. It is outside the remit of the criminal area but I am going to use the Chair's prerogative to throw it out anyway because there is an overlap. It strikes me that childcare cases are an area that could benefit enormously from legal aid reform. We are dealing with a situation in such cases where the fundamental parental right is being challenged and, in many cases, removed. That is the whole idea of childcare proceedings where somebody is being separated from their child. As far as I understand the position, there is no provision at the moment for legal aid to be assigned from the Bench. There might be one or two circumstances where it has become a practice but it not done officially. In fact, it is seldom done. As I say, I am aware of one or two judges who might ask a local solicitor to take on a particular case but that is very much the exception. It strikes me that of all the people who need to be assisted in access to legal aid, by definition, people whose struggles in life so great that their children are going to be taken away from them because they cannot manage parental duties are probably unlikely to be attend at a legal aid centre, complete a form, have a consultation and arrange their affairs in such a way as to allow them begin to be represented. The consequence is that in respect of one of the most fundamental constitutional rights of all, trial before a court, there is nobody being remunerated to represent the person on the other side of that argument, namely, the parent. There is a scheme whereby if people have the wherewithal to apply for a legal aid certificate, they can be represented through the legal aid scheme but, as I have said, many people in those situations do not have the wherewithal to organise that. It strikes me that a quick fix for that situation would be to allow a judge from the Bench to assign legal aid to a local solicitor, Mr. X or Mrs. Y, in the same way as already happens for criminal legal aid. That has struck me in the past as a glaring gap in the constitutional framework because of the rights that are being exercised, and in respect of the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR, for that matter. I would be interested in the views around the room on that point. Does anybody agree or disagree with me and if so, why?