Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)

The Northside Community Law Centre was founded 35 years ago in Coolock to provide legal information, advice and representation, to protect and develop the human, social and economic rights of individuals and groups and to empower the northside community is through education, research and campaigns.

The centre, known as the Coolock Community Law Centre until 2003, was modelled on community law centres which started in the United States as part of President Johnson's war on poverty. A key part of empowering local communities was to give control of such law centres to a management committee containing a built-in majority of community representatives. The Northside Community Law Centre is governed by a voluntary board of directors, headed by the distinguished former county councillor Mr. Tom Brennan PC, with a majority of local directors. For many years I was also a member of the centre.

The centre, led by solicitor in charge Mr Colin Daly, provides a wonderful and invaluable range of services to constituents across its operational area of the constituencies of Dublin North-East and Dublin North-Central. These services are freely and widely made available to citizens and families living on low wages and social welfare benefits. In 2009, for example, the centre made its services available to 3,267 clients, including 975 information contacts, 1,639 advice contacts, 123 court representations, 267 community education contacts and 263 mediation cases.

This onerous and impressive workload is set to be surpassed in 2010. Like the other Deputies representing Dublin North-East and Dublin North-Central I regularly refer constituents to the centre for essential information and legal assistance. The mediation service offered by the service, Mediation Northside, has been developed in an innovative manner by the centre and offers a critical mediation and conflict resolution service to families, communities and all our local agencies, including Dublin City Council.

As with the mediation service, the centre has also long had a national profile for its pioneering community legal initiatives. Among the more recent groundbreaking and successful cases on behalf of its clients are Caroline McCann v. Judge of Monaghan District Court and others of June 2010, and Pullen and others v. Dublin City Council of October 2009. As a result of the McCann case the law relating to imprisonment for the failure to pay a civil debt was declared unconstitutional and the Pullen case established that the then eviction process for local authority tenant infringed the European Convention on Human Rights.

The centre has a very small and dedicated core staff, led by Mr Colin Daly and two other solicitors. A feature of the centre's history has been the pro bono voluntary services of legal professionals and volunteers. More than 40 solicitors and barristers volunteer with the law centre to help staff meet demand and volunteers also carry out the important work of the mediation service.

There are grave concerns among my constituents that funding for the centre will be cut in budget 2011. The centre's 2009 annual report shows a serious reduction in income of more than €150,000 from a then 2008 budget of under €700,000. This time last year, there were fears that the 2010 budget would further reduce the centre's department of social protection grant. Thankfully, at the time the Minister accepted the strong case made for the law centre's vital work made last November. In recent years, as I saw on my recent visit to the Northside Community Law Centre, costs have been cut to the bone. Any reduction in grant income for 2011 would imperil the fundamental role and service of the centre. Given its hugely dedicated and much appreciated service to the people who sent me to the Dáil, and my colleagues, I urge the Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, to ensure that the Department of Social Protection's grant to the law centre will not be cut for 2011 and that the service will be protected as a key instrument of public policy for the people of these two Dáil constituencies.

I agree completely with Mr. Jonathan Friedland who, in today's Guardian newspaper, castigated the savage Tory and Liberal Democrat government's cuts to legal aid in England. Mr. Friedland said that equality before the law has to mean equal access to the law.

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