Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality his plans to tackle the cost to the State of free legal aid; if he will provide up to date details of the costs involved and the number of clients involved; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1607/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that the provision of legal aid falls within two separate categories, i.e civil legal aid and criminal legal aid. Details in respect of each category are as follows:

Civil Legal Aid

In respect of civil legal aid, state funding of €32.922 million was allocated to the Legal Aid Board in 2012 and this level of funding has been maintained for this year. This covers funding for civil legal aid and advice, including legal services for asylum seekers, and also funding for the provision of the Family Mediation Service, for which the Board assumed responsibility in late 2011. There has been a significant increase in demand for civil legal aid services in recent years, with a greater number of people financially eligible as a result of the economic downturn. Final year figures for the number of cases handled in 2012 are not available but the outturn is likely to be similar to 2011, when there were, in total, over 23,650 legal aid and advice cases handled.

In view of the substantial demand for civil legal aid and the waiting times to access services, the Legal Aid Board is focusing on maximising the effectiveness of the resources available to it to deliver a meaningful service. Amongst the measures taken recently to this end are initiatives to increase the use of mediation to resolve family disputes, which leads to reduced legal costs, and the introduction of a 'triage' service to ensure that clients receive initial legal advice within one month of making an application for legal services. The Board is also striving to make its law centre network as effective and efficient as possible and the recent introduction of a new legal case management system will help in this regard. I should also point out that the Board introduced new conditions for retaining barristers in August 2012 which will result in lower fees paid to barristers in cases where they are instructed by Legal Aid Board solicitors.

Criminal Legal Aid

Expenditure on criminal legal aid for each of the past three years is set out in the table along with data as provided by the Courts Service on the number of legal aid certificates granted in the District Court. It should be noted the number of certificates does not equate to the number of persons granted criminal legal aid as more than one certificate could be granted to any one person. The number of legal aid certificates granted by the District Court in December 2012 is not yet available.

Under the Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Act 1962, the Courts, through the judiciary, are responsible for the granting of criminal legal aid. An applicant for legal aid must establish to the satisfaction of the court that his/her means are insufficient to enable him/her to pay for legal representation him/herself. The Court must also be satisfied that, by reason of the gravity of the charge or exceptional circumstances, it is essential in the interests of justice that the applicant should have legal aid.

The nature of the Scheme is that it is demand-led, driven by the incidence of crime, detection rates and prosecutions of cases through the courts systems. This renders it difficult to anticipate and control costs. Since taking office I have introduced a number of adjustments to the fees available under the Scheme. These included regulations which were introduced in 2011 which imposed a reduction of 10% in the fees payable in the District Court. Fees payable in the Circuit and higher courts were also decreased by 10% following the reduction in the fees payable by the Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecution practitioners. A reduction of 50% was applied to payments in respect of travel and subsistence. As the Deputy will see from the table above, following these and other measures introduced in the course of 2011, a 10% reduction in expenditure was recorded in 2012 compared with 2011. This is the first substantial reduction ever recorded under this scheme.

Parallel with the cuts in fees in 2011, the Task Force on Cost Reductions on Criminal Legal Aid highlighted areas of change related to the structures and systems of the courts which could contribute to cost reductions, not just for legal aid but across the system in general. Following that process, the Chief Justice and I established a Working Group towards the end of 2011 to monitor implementation of these efficiency measures in the Circuit and District Courts and to identify further measures which could be adopted. This Group, whose work is on-going, is pursuing initiatives which can contribute to achieving efficiencies and cost reductions in the system such as, for example, introducing a pilot programme centralising custody cases in four court Districts and the introduction of the pre-trial procedure on a pilot basis in the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and the Midland Circuit Criminal Court.

Finally, a new Legal Aid Bill is planned to update and strengthen the system of granting legal aid including transferring responsibility for the administration of the Scheme to the Legal Aid Board. I hope it will be possible to publish the Bill during the course of this year.