More than 1,300 people were granted legal aid for divorce proceedings in 1998, an increase of 40 per cent on the 1997 figure of about 900, according to the annual report of the Legal Aid Board. While statistics are not directly comparable because the Courts Service figures cover the legal year ending in July, they still suggest that about half of all divorce applications are made through legal aid. There were 1,252 divorce applications in all from August to December 1998, close to the number made through legal aid for the whole year.
Waiting lists continued to grow in 1998, according to the report. There were more than 1,200 applicants seeking legal aid for divorce at the end of February 1997, most of whose cases would not have been heard until 1998, thus tying up much of the board's resources. However, the chief executive of the board, Mr Frank Goodman, said yesterday, when publishing the report, that in 1999 there had been a significant reduction in waiting times for appointments with solicitors.
Also, there had been a fall in the number of people on waiting lists from 4,200 at the end of December 1998 to 3,200 at the end of November this year. The reduction in waiting lists came after an increase in staff in 1998, most of whom came on stream in 1999.
As well as the additional work created by the demand for divorce, the work of the board was also disrupted by high staff turnover, according to the report. In 1998, 70, or about a quarter, of the staff of the board left, compared with 51 in 1997. "When trained staff leave there are often delays due to the difficulty in filling vacancies and the subsequent training requirements of the replacement staff," Mr Goodman said.
In 1998 the board introduced a new service, the Refugee Legal Service, based in the "one-stop shop" in Lower Mount Street, Dublin, in the building which also houses the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This has a staff of 32 and was allocated £1 million in 1999. From February to November 1999 it provided legal advice to 1,483 asylum-seekers.
The number of people other than refugees who received legal services was almost 14,000 in 1998, very close to the 1997 figure. While about 10 per cent of them received help with divorce applications, the majority of the remainder also related to family law. This area accounts for 90 per cent of legal advice cases and 97 per cent of court cases.
The introduction of divorce has not significantly reduced the demand for judicial separation, which dropped from just over 1,200 in 1997 to just under 1,000 in 1998. The report points out that this legislation will remain important for those who do not wish to institute divorce proceedings, or have not lived apart for four years, but want to sort out issues like property, pensions and maintenance.
The other areas of family law dealt with by the Legal Aid Board include barring and protection orders, maintenance, custody and access, cases involving children taken into care and child abduction cases.
The grant-in-aid from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform was £9.6 million in 1998, an increase of 14.5 per cent on 1997. This provides 95 per cent of the funding for the Legal Aid Board, with the rest coming from client contributions.