Sir, – Rose Wall of Community Law & Mediation calls for the issue of access to justice to be revisited by the next government (Letters, January 29th).
She cites the Civil Legal Aid scheme, a scheme that has its origins in a call made to Cork City Citizens Advice Bureau in 1972. That initial inquiry went through many phases before becoming the Supreme Court ruling in Airey v Ireland, the case that revealed the right of Irish citizens to access to legal aid in family cases.
Maureen Curtis Black, the Citizens Advice volunteer who took the original enquiry and stayed with it through the Supreme Court ruling, was conferred with the Freedom of Cork City in April 1993, with then-lord mayor Micheál Martin TD officiating.
In 2018, the model of Citizens Advice provision in Ireland was “restructured”from a system of community-supported organisations operating independently and impartially, defined by local authority boundaries, to a centrally directed unitary national apparatus.
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This despite a Dáil vote in which all but Fine Gael and some Independents expressed confidence in the system that has now been destroyed.
Furthermore, a Joint Oireachtas Committee report unanimously – and correctly – described “restructuring” as “flawed and ill-considered” and called for it to be stopped.
So the corporate governance services as they stand now have lost their European Foundation for Quality Management Gold Standard rating and proceed in defiance of the will of the legislature, even while being financially supported by monies voted on appropriation to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.
I hope the incoming “Minister for Issues to be Revisited” will take note. – Yours, etc,
DES GUNNING,
Phibsborough,
Dublin 7.