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CRIMINAL BARRISTERS ACROSS Ireland are withdrawing their services today in protest against the lack of progress on pay restoration.
It’s the first of three days of withdrawal this month, with services also due to be withdrawn on Monday, 15 July and Wednesday, 24 July.
This comes following a recommendation from The Council of The Bar of Ireland last month to undertake industrial action in a bid to restore cuts to criminal legal aid funding.
No cases will be heard in Criminal Courts today, and there will also be protests on the steps of the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin and at a further 15 courthouses nationwide.
The Government also committed to reviewing the structure and level of fees paid.
The Bar of Ireland has said that even after this, the full range of Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) cuts that were applied across the public sector between the years 2009 and 2015 continue to apply to the profession.
Sean Guerin SC, Chair of the Criminal State Bar Committee, said that until the 10% pay restoration was introduced in January, pay rates were at 2002 levels.
He told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that there had been an effective pay cut of over 40%, and that the 10% pay restoration “has improved it but we’ve still suffered an effective 30% plus pay cut”.
“If complete pay restoration took place in the morning, the effect of inflation since 2008 would still have reduced barristers pay by 15 or 16%,” said Guerrin.
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“We’re not looking for that back, we’re not looking for a pay increase, we’re looking for pay restoration.
“The cuts that were introduced in 2009, when everyone bore the pain of the recession, we bore an additional 10% pay cut that didn’t apply to others, and we’re simply asking for those emergency era measures to be reversed.”
He said there will be “some very short delays” as a result of the action taking place today and later this month and that barristers “deeply regret” this.
But he added that these delays are happening “because we continue to cooperate with significant improvements in the criminal justice system” since 2018 without the restoration of pay cuts.
“Every other sector has had pay restoration in return for like cooperation,” said Guerrin.
He also remarked that Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said there is “there is no good reason why pay restoration hasn’t taken place”.
“We’ve been waiting now since 2016, but at least in 2018 it was acknowledged that we had met the conditions for pay restoration.
“There is no good reason in our view why the government couldn’t give a commitment to resolve this long, outstanding unfairness and implement it in the budget.”
And while Guerrin remarked that “some barristers are very well paid”, he added that “most of them are not” and that the profession is losing people at the junior level as a result.
“Two thirds of those who begin practicing criminal law will give up that practice within six years,” said Guerrin.
“That has long term consequences in having available in the future a cohort of barristers who have the training, education, and the experience necessary to handle the most difficult and sensitive cases.”
He added that pay rates “vary from case to case” but said that the “real issue is that until the 10% pay restoration was introduced, pay rates were at 2002 levels”.
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