Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister again, but the problem is that this is governed by the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995. It is 2019 and this is only being reviewed now to see why there is a poor take-up. That is very problematic. Perhaps the role we can play is to ask why these provisions are not being reviewed now. We are not in a position to bring the actual information to the Minister, but his Department is obviously not in the position of going out and looking for the information either. That is worrying because these provisions are put in place to make it easier for victims and to assist the prosecution of these very serious crimes. As part of that we must have a review as to how these provisions are working and what we need to do to change them. While this information service is very limited, quite a number of cases are going to court and going through the whole prosecution service without the service being availed of, and we should be asking why.

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