SOLICITORS WORKING IN the criminal legal aid system are set to escalate their stand-off with justice minister Jim O’Callaghan when they begin a work stoppage in Dublin tomorrow.

The solicitors have been locked in a row with the Department of Justice for weeks over the imposition of a flat fee system for their work providing free legal aid in criminal cases. 

The solicitors have criticised the change because they will earn a flat fee regardless of how many appearances are involved in a case.

The solicitors had already stopped providing the legal aid service, leading to the adjournment of many cases, but now are set to halt all work in the Dublin District Court, Circuit Court and the Central Criminal Court. 

The stoppage will cover Thursday and Friday this week, as well as the first three days of next week. 

Tony Collier, a solicitor and spokesperson for the group, told RTÉ the stoppage “will affect all courts in the Criminal Court of Justice and I expect this action to be mirrored nationally”.

“We would have hoped that these matters could have been resolved,” he said.

“I think the issue behind it was the lack of engagement at the earlier stages have brought us to this point, which is regretful.”

Another solicitor, Michael Finucane, told the broadcaster the blame for the stand-off lay with the justice minister. 

“Accused persons, victims of crime and all other persons, all the various stakeholders who are doing their best to make the system work have been very badly affected by the action that solicitors have been forced to take,” he said.

“But the fault for that is clearly in the office of the Minister for Justice.

“He should start owning up to the mistakes that he’s made and doing something to rectify them.”

Up to 200 solicitors have indicated they would resign from the legal aid panel.

O’Callaghan has claimed the “vast majority” of solicitors are “still working”, but this has been characterised as a misrepresentation of the dispute as work is concentrated among a cohort of solicitors.

Analysis of criminal legal aid payments to solicitors in 2025 shows that almost 60% of all the fees paid last year went to the 100 top-earning solicitors on the list – rising to 80% and more than 90% when expanded to top 200 and top 300 respectively.

There were 764 solicitors on that list.

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Taoiseach Micheál Martin said earlier this month that withdrawing their services was not “the correct course of action” while noting that O’Callaghan had already increased the flat fee since it was introduced from €455 to €520.

Before the change, solicitors were paid around €240 for the first appearance and about €60 for each subsequent sitting. 

Higher education minister James Lawless, who is also a qualified barrister, said yesterday that he was aware of “examples of the system being misused”.

“I would have been aware from my previous law practice that there were examples of the system being misused, frankly, within some of the criminal law sphere,” he said.

“That’s not to say for a moment that every solicitor, every practitioner was involved in that – not at all.

“But it was a system that was open to abuse at times, and I think unfortunately some of that would have manifested in certain quarters.

“I think what the minister is doing is trying to tackle that.”

With reporting from Press Association