A High Court judge has said the failure of a District Court judge to respond to two messages led to the cancellation of a bail list for 68 people and consequent doubt over whether the applicants' lawyers, who were mainly junior barristers performing "a public service", will ever get paid.
The messages were intended to have the District Court judge vacate a larger courtroom so the bail list could be heard there, Mr Justice Carney said.
Mr Justice Carney was explaining his decision to recommend, under the Attorney General's scheme of legal aid, payments for the lawyers who turned up to seek bail for their clients at the June 11th hearing at Cloverhill court which Mr Justice Carney cancelled because of the unsuitability of the courtroom.
The estimated cost of paying the lawyers is €75,000. However, in court yesterday, Mr Paul O'Higgins SC, for the Attorney General, indicated the Attorney believed he could not and should not make payments on the basis of a general recommendation in relation to a large number of cases.
He said the scheme only operated on the basis of consideration by a judge of each individual application for aid under the scheme.
Mr Justice Carney said it was impossible, for space and health and safety reasons, for him to conduct the bail list in the small courtroom at Cloverhill, as some 200 people were involved, including the 68 bail applicants and their legal teams.
He said a District Court judge was occupying a much larger High Court room at Cloverhill on the same date, although that judge was dealing with cases involving relatively smaller numbers of people.
He had sent two messages to that judge obviously to suggest switching courtrooms but received no response to either message. He then asked all parties to assemble in the smaller courtroom and told them he could not continue with the list and adjourned it to the following Monday.
The June 11th sitting was during the court vacation and lawyers attending that day had given up their vacation and travelled to the "wilderness" of Cloverhill. It seemed unjust to him that they should be totally deprived of remuneration for the day.
The judge said the AG's scheme was non-statutory and unsatisfactory in many respects. All he could do was make a recommendation that those attending be paid under the scheme in every case. He recognised his order "did not come within the four walls of the scheme but it was all that was open to me".
The judge said the Attorney could not stop him making the recommendation. However, neither could he force the Attorney to make payments on foot of that recommendation.
"That is the situation, I have expressed my views and so has the Attorney and the professional bodies."
Earlier, lawyers representing the Bar Council and the Law Society accepted that the Attorney's scheme is non-statutory and operates on the basis of recommendations by the courts for payment.