Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

The Minister for Justice and Equality has asked me to thank Deputy Flanagan for providing him with the opportunity to debate this matter. The Minister understands that the Northside Community Law Centre, NCLC, which is based in the Northside Civic Centre, Dublin 17, has been in operation since 1975 and that it was the first community law centre in the Republic of Ireland.

The Minister notes from its website that the NCLC provides services to individuals and groups that reside within the Dublin North-Central constituency and Deputy Flanagan's constituency of Dublin North-East. The NCLC, in addition to being a community law centre, is an independent law centre and, as such, is not one of the local law centres established by the State to provide legal services in regard to civil law matters by the Legal Aid Board.

The Legal Aid Board, which comes under the remit of the Department for Justice and Equality, is an independent, publicly funded organisation. It has been in existence since 1979 and was set up as a statutory body on foot of the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995. The board's objective is to provide a professional, efficient, cost-effective and accessible legal aid advice service. The board has an executive management structure primarily located at its head office in Caherciveen, County Kerry and also at an office in Mount Street, Dublin. Most importantly, particularly in regard to this debate, the board also has 33 full-time law centres located throughout the country, including seven such centres which are located in Dublin. The board also operates a private practitioner service, a refugee documentation service and a library service in Montague Lane, Dublin. In addition, the functions of the Legal Aid Board were recently extended to include a family mediation centre.

In 2007, just over 10,150 persons sought legal services from the board in regard to general civil, non-asylum, matters. This figure increased to 17,175 in 2010 while the number of applicants in the first six months of this year was almost equal to the total number for the 12 months of 2007. As these figures clearly demonstrate, the Department of Justice and Equality and its agencies are, due to reduced financial resources being available, under severe pressure to meet the demands placed on them to provide existing services.

The Minister for Justice and Equality understands that the Department of Social Protection has for some years provided finance to the NCLC. The Minister is informed that a number of meetings took place earlier this year between the NCLC and officials from the Department of Social Protection and that, as a result, a total of €350,000 is to be made available to the law centre during 2011. The Minister for Justice and Equality further understands that the Department of Social Protection will not be in a position to provide such financial assistance going forward.

The Department of Justice and Equality does not fund the NCLC. It has been approached on several occasions in recent years regarding funding for the law centre but no funding source was identified or money made available to the NCLC.

The Department of Justice and Equality funds the Legal Aid Board which provides civil legal aid to persons of insufficient means. While the Minister acknowledges the service provided to the community by the NCLC he does not have any financial resources which he can allocate to it or to similar bodies.

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