Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also offer my condolences to Senator Mullen. I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that No. 12, the Civil Legal Aid (Exclusion of Value of Free or Partly Free Board) (Amendment) Bill 2021, be taken on the conclusion of the Order of Business today. I hope the Leader will have no objections to that. I am aware that a review of the entire civil legal aid system is under way, which is welcome, but the issue my Bill seeks to address is time-sensitive. Every day, there are people, mostly women, who are being effectively denied representation in the courts due to the deeply unfair and discriminatory policy of counting the housing assistance payment, HAP, as income. In order to qualify for HAP, a person must meet the financial eligibility requirements for local authority housing. However, due to the failure of successive Governments over the past decade to address the housing crisis, there is a chronic shortage of local authority homes. The HAP was the market mechanism that Fine Gael introduced to address this situation and over 60,000 households are now in receipt of the payment. However, every Member of this House knows that housing assistance payments go directly to the landlord and the tenant never receives that money. Not only that, because the caps on the housing assistance payment do not meet the current market rents, many tenants are bridging the gap from their own resources, which is further depleting their low income. Yet when it comes to accessing justice, the Legal Aid Board counts the housing assistance payment as income and is effectively denying people representation in the courts. This is clearly a breach of the European Court of Human Rights ruling when the formidable Josie Airey took on the State in 1979. That ruling said that it was unreasonable to expect somebody to represent themselves in the court, yet this is what the State is complicit in doing by not changing the regulations. As women who have fled domestic violence are now obliged to represent themselves in the courts when it comes to child access rights and maintenance, I hope we can debate this Bill in the House soon.