Child protection cases will be among the first court hearings hit if senior barristers strike over a £40 million pay dispute, it was said today.
Legal bids to take vulnerable children into care will be severely disrupted if the backpay issue in the Northern Ireland court system is not resolved, the body representing barristers indicated.
The Bar Council in Belfast confirmed that Family Care Centre cases, which are held in the region's county courts, are at the centre of the pay wrangle that has seen its members threaten to boycott hearings.
Barristers are proposing to take action after the failure to resolve a dispute with the Court Service that has seen many of them going without legal aid payments for cases they worked on almost nine years ago.
That is when a new payment structure for Family Care Centre cases was introduced.
Many senior barristers have also not been paid for work on certain criminal cases since 2005.
These Very High Cost (VHC) cases involve trials that last for more than 21 days.
The boycott, which will see barristers sending briefing papers back to solicitors, will begin on Friday if a crunch meeting between the Bar Council and the Northern Ireland Court Service tomorrow does not bring settlement.
One barrister said he and his colleagues have had enough.
"Some of us haven't been paid for cases from eight years ago," he said.
"This can't go on. It's come to the point where briefing papers will be sent back until this is sorted."
He explained which child cases would be hit, saying: "Family Care Centre cases are where social services get involved to potentially remove a child from its parents.
"The child cases in the magistrates' courts would be unaffected but the cases held in the county court (Family Care Centre) are generally the most serious ones. Those are the ones that will be hit if the boycott goes ahead."
Barristers are also angry that legal aid fees for cases in magistrates' courts have not been increased since 1993.
SDLP Assembly Member Alban Maginness, who is a barrister in non-criminal cases, said his colleagues' demands were not unreasonable and explained that they were still having to pay tax on the payments they have not received.
The north Belfast representative said a failure to resolve the dispute would see some courts grind to a halt.
"It would certainly bring the administration of justice to a standstill in some criminal courts," he said.
"Many trials would have to be put back, people would go unrepresented and it would create many backlogs in the system. It would generally cause a lot of problems for a lot of people."
A spokeswoman for the Court Service said discussions were continuing to avoid the need for industrial action.
"It is hoped to present proposals to the Bar Council shortly which may represent a basis for moving forward," she said.
A spokeswoman for the Bar Council said she hoped a satisfactory resolution could be achieved in the near future.
PA