Major disruption of the legal aid service is likely if all the functions of the Legal Aid Board are transferred to Cahirciveen, says a confidential report on the proposed move.
Last July the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, announced that the Legal Aid Board head office would be transferred to his home town in Co Kerry. The board asked its senior management to prepare an impact assessment report on the proposed transfer. This is now being considered by the Minister, who has said he was pleased to receive it.
In the report the board says some of the centrally located functions of the board could be discharged from a decentralised location. However, if all the functions were to be transferred, it was likely to lead to major disruption, resulting in a reduced level of service to applicants.
In order to minimise the disruption, the board recommends the maintenance of an office in Dublin alongside the proposed office in Cahirciveen. This would involve an increase of 25 per cent in the administrative staff of the central office, from 44 to 55, and the likelihood of increased expenditure on travel and associated expenses.
The report on the transfer points out that in 1997 51 staff left the board, and that this increased to 71, approximately one in four, in 1998. "The time spent on recruitment is very significant in the board, particularly because of the high turnover of staff at clerical level and at solicitor level," it said.
Because 40 per cent of the board's 30 legal aid centres are in the Dublin area, and only seven of them are more than 100 miles from the capital, interviews always take place in Dublin, according to the report. "It would not be feasible to expect candidates to travel outside Dublin for interview for posts in Dublin (where most vacancies arise), or other locations around the country," it said.
The transfer could also cost hundreds of thousands of pounds in mileage and other expenses as staff travel between Dublin and Cahirciveen for meetings, according to the report. It states that union representatives have indicated they would not be willing to travel to Cahirciveen, "which will result in a considerable time costing for the personnel staff travelling to these meetings in Dublin".
The total number of meetings involving management staff is estimated at over 600 a year by the impact assessment report.
Twenty-five of the legal aid centres (all but Limerick, Ennis, Tralee and two in Cork) are more than 100 miles from Cahirciveen, and eight are more than 200 miles, with estimated travel times ranging from five to almost eight hours. Mileage rates vary with the total distance travelled and the size of the car engine, but generally fall between 49 and 70 pence a mile.