By Callum McGuigan

AN INCREASE of £13 million has been spent on legal aid fees in the North since last year.

The annual report ‘Legal Aid in Northern Ireland: Annual Statistics to March 2024’ which was published on Thursday, detailed the expenditure for 2023/2024.

Legal aid is a fund operated through the Department of Justice (DOJ) to help people in low income households to afford legal representations at criminal and civil courts.

For legal aid to be granted, the lower limit for disposable income is £3,355; the upper disposable income limit is £9,937 and in Personal Injury cases, it is £10,955.

In 2023/24, a total of 63,881 cases were granted legal aid. Of these, over two-thirds (69%; 44,260) were criminal cases with 31% (19,621) representing civil cases granted by the Agency. This represents a small decrease of 0.1% (95) on the previous year (2022/23; 63,976).

However, local solicitor Michael Fahy said that whilst more legal aid was spent, it has become harder for people to obtain the fund for legal representation.

“The legal aid mechanism allows more people to get access to legal representation for a fair trial, whether that be criminal or civil proceedings,” said Mr Fahy, “Yet the ability for people to access the fund has become harder in the last few years. Especially in civil cases it can be harder to get, as the court may see someone as well off but they don’t consider their outgoings, especially during this cost-of-living crisis.

“For driving cases at the criminal court, there is no legal aid,” continued Mr Fahy, “This leads to people who may be working and have no legal experience to shy away from the legal fees as they can’t afford it. This lack of legal representation could lead to people losing their licence or facing disqualifications, which may impact their employment. This could have easily be avoided if they had a solicitor or barrister but because they can’t access legal aid they face these penalties.”