Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I warmly welcome this Bill and acknowledge and pay tribute to the enormous work Senator Boylan undertook to bring it to this point. She has detailed the very many communications and efforts over the past year and longer to try to get the Government to move on this. I welcome the fact that the Government is now moving on it, albeit belatedly. Following on from its commitment to support this Bill tonight, the Government must work to enact it as soon as possible because for as long as Senator Boylan has been raising these issues, women and families in very vulnerable situations have been left with no representation at all. They have been waiting for barring orders, maintenance orders, resolutions to their custody disputes and many other matters for which they needed civil legal aid. It should not have taken this long but I welcome the fact that the Government has eventually moved.

The Bill amends the principal Act to exclude free or partly free board in the consideration of eligibility for free civil legal aid. That sounds very archaic but the reality is that the State is paying rent directly to landlords through HAP to put a roof over the heads of thousands of families and individuals. It really is extraordinary that HAP was ever considered to be income. When one thinks of income, one thinks of the money one has to earn to pay for the things one needs in life. Some of us are fortunate enough to have discretion or control over the remainder of our income but there is no discretion or autonomy with HAP. Many of us in this House are dealing, day in and day out, with families in north Dublin who have €1,912 to spend on rent but who still cannot find appropriate housing. There is certainly no discretion or autonomy with regard to HAP.

I have spoken to lawyers who represent people in civil legal cases and since being elected to the Seanad, I have been contacted by many people in very difficult situations. I have been struck by how difficult it is to overstate the importance of civil legal aid to individuals and families in terms of the vindication of their rights, particularly in the context of domestic violence, marital breakdown or family law issues.

This Bill is a small but very significant step forward in the context of much broader reform. The Government is committed to reforming the entire civil legal aid system. Not only do we have problems with the means test, there are also considerable delays in the system. Reference has been made here to delays of varying lengths but in 2020 FLAC said that there were delays of up to 58 weeks in the system. People are waiting for over a year to access legal representation, which is horrendous. It is absolutely horrendous to think that people would be left in limbo for that length of time.

I also look forward to a broader debate in this House on reform of the civil legal aid system. At the moment it is very limited and it should be extended. I think particularly of workers in the context of cases of sexual and other harassment in the workplace and the lack of representation for them if they have to go to the Workplace Relations Commission or of parents trying to vindicate the rights of their child to access special needs education.

This Bill is extremely welcome. I congratulate Sinn Féin and Senator Boylan for bringing it before the House. The clear message from this Chamber is that this Bill must be enacted as soon as possible because we can no longer have a situation where vulnerable individuals who need to access civil legal aid are excluded.