Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to put on record that the contributions of Deputy Alan Farrell and, I think, Deputy Eugene Murphy were outrageous. They attempted to use a debate on gangland killings to make cheap, unfounded allegations and criticisms of me relating to legal aid. In particular, I ask that Deputy Farrell be asked to withdraw the remark that I committed a crime against the taxpayer. I note that Deputy Murphy clearly saw me come into the Chamber but scuttled off, and that Deputy Collins made a snide reference earlier to the same issue.

There has been a lot of nonsense spoken about this issue by people in the media and now repeated inside the Dáil. The common features of all this nonsense and the people speaking are, first, that people know nothing about how the legal aid system works - they seem to conflate the civil legal aid system and the criminal legal aid system - and, second, unsurprisingly, that all these people are in favour of water charges. They are feeling a little sore now that a massive movement of protest and non-payment has beaten others in this House and the elements of the establishment media that hate to see working class people organising themselves and fighting back. That is the context. They feel sore and are trying to do damage to the Anti-Austerity Alliance and the anti-water charges movement in general.

Let me put some facts on the record, because they have been absent in this debate. The case that I face with regard to the protest in Jobstown in November of 2014 started out in the District Court. In the District Court, I did not apply for or receive legal aid. I had to pay my legal fees. However, the Director of Public Prosecutions - the State - sought to move the case from the District Court to the Circuit Court to try it on indictment. Why? It is because the maximum sentence if convicted in the District Court is only one year in prison, whereas the maximum sentence if convicted in the Circuit Court is life in prison. That is why the Director of Public Prosecutions made that decision. That is one consequence of going from the District Court to the Circuit Court. The other consequence is that legal costs balloon. If any defendant, any of the 19 of us, did not receive legal aid and had to pay for a solicitor, junior counsel and senior counsel for a trial that has been set aside for at least four weeks - the lawyers say perhaps six weeks - with a huge number of witnesses in what is a massively complicated case, the fees we face could potentially be well in excess of €100,000. That is not an exaggeration. Therefore, whether I take a young worker's wage or do not is not the point. I could take the entire salary of a Deputy for the next year and not spend any of it, and I still could not afford to pay those legal fees. I would therefore be denied access to justice, which I think is what some Deputies in this House would like to see happen.

See this speech in context