FLAC Annual Report Launch 2025 Remarks by Eilis Barry (FLAC Chief Executive)

Good morning and welcome to the Minister, colleagues and friends. Thank you, Minister, for your kind comments about FLAC.

This 2025 Annual Report highlights the extent of unmet legal need that our hugely oversubscribed Telephone Information Line, Traveller Legal Service and Roma Legal Clinic encounter on a daily basis.

It is this unmet need and the inadequacies of the Civil Legal Aid scheme that FLAC staff encounter, that were the catalyst for our successful campaign for a comprehensive review of Ireland’s system of Civil Legal Aid.

For me, one obvious personal highlight of 2025 was the publication of the reports which arose from the Civil Legal Aid Review, including the Minority Report which I drafted and was pleased to have endorsed by Professor Thomas O’Malley SC. The Minority Report describes the system of public legal assistance as being in crisis, and as failing and unable to meet significant legal need, especially among individuals and groups who live in poverty, extreme poverty and/or who experience disadvantage and discrimination.

We know that, since then, the Legal Aid Board has itself talked about going from crisis to collapse. The current strike in relation to the Criminal Legal Aid scheme highlighted concerns about the potential for legal aid deserts. Our phoneline regularly hears from callers who are entitled to legal aid but who cannot find a private solicitor to act for them. The legal aid deserts are already present and have been for some time in relation to civil legal aid in parts of Dublin and the west.

There has been a silent and less publicised but definite exodus of the practitioners from the Legal Aid Board’s Private Practitioner Scheme, which means that there are waiting times to see a Legal Aid Board solicitor of 60 solicitor weeks in Sligo, 55 weeks in Ennis, 48 weeks in Ballymun and Navan, and 41 weeks for the Legal Aid Board’s Traveller service.

The contents of the 2025 FLAC Annual Report clearly corroborate the case for the implementation of the Minority Report reforms.

FLAC’s Telephone Information and Referral Line team received 66,361 calls and we had capacity to respond to 14,103 of these queries in 2025, the highest since 2015, mainly in the areas of family or employment law.

FLAC answered 635 queries in relation to domestic violence during 2025, an 18% increase since 2024 and a record high.

There was also a 57.5% increase in queries relating to housing/landlord and tenant issues (1,189 queries).

2025 also saw the highest number of employment law queries (3,317) ever recorded on the phoneline, accounting for almost one-quarter of all calls (up 42% compared with the previous year). We regularly hear from claimants who are acting for themselves who are up against employers with a solicitor and also barristers (including in claims against the State and public bodies), and who clearly view representation for themselves as essential.

In addition to the phoneline, volunteer lawyers and solicitors also provided basic legal advice to over 3,600 people at free legal advice clinics.

FLAC has nowhere to refer callers in areas like landlord/tenant and employment and discrimination law, because the Legal Aid Board cannot provide legal representation in cases before tribunals like the WRC or RTB.

Despite the very clear evidence of the need for such services, the Legal Aid Board also has no function to provide legal information either generally or in a targeted way.

Our Independent Law Centre and its dedicated services for the Traveller and Roma communities, provided 234 people with legal representation – mainly in discrimination and housing/homelessness cases. Again, these are areas where legal aid tends not to be provided.

FLAC provided representation in relation to 107 complaints (or potential complaints) under the equality legislation. The very high levels of discrimination against Travellers and Roma who are seeking to access shops, pubs, hotels and restaurants, and in particular cases concerning Roma and access to shops, reinforces our previous calls for IHREC to issue a Code of Practice which addresses access to goods and services and also, in particular, the role and responsibilities of security guards.

The very high levels of discrimination witnessed by our independent law centre led to our campaign for a review of the equality legislation. FLAC welcomed the provisions in the General Scheme of the Equality (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024 which arose from the review, and we were pleased that it adopts some of FLAC’s proposals. We particularly welcome the proposals:

• to increase potential compensation for equal status complaints from €15,000 to €75,000,
• to move the jurisdiction for hearing discrimination complaints against licensed premises from the District Court to the WRC, and
• to impose improved obligations in relation to the reasonable accommodation of people with disabilities.

We also welcomed the Oireachtas Equality Committee’s report on the Equality Bill in October 2025, which also adopted many of FLAC’s recommendations for strengthening the legislation. It is disheartening that that this legislation now appears to have stalled. While it requires improvements and expansion, it is the most significant - and really necessary - piece of law reform in this area for two decades, and is vital to breathe some life into the anti-discrimination legislation.

We were also pleased that the UN CEDAW Committee called for the Equality Bill to be expedited and for “access to legal aid and legal representation for women in all areas of law where discrimination occurs.”

Our Independent Law Centre’s intervention in housing cases resulted in a number of families being able to access social housing or emergency, including a Traveller family who had been living on the roadside in poor conditions for five years.

The outcomes in FLAC’s housing casework illustrates the consistent issues with the quality and fairness of decision-making by local authorities regarding social housing and emergency homelessness accommodation. We also see very poor decision-making in other areas such as social welfare appeals. At present, judicial review is often the only way to challenge unfair or unlawful decisions concerning access to social housing or emergency accommodation, or in relation to social welfare appeals. The provisions the Civil Reform Bill, which is currently under consideration, would likely block many of the judicial review cases that FLAC provides representation.

One highlight of last year was the enactment of the Bereaved Partner’s Pension Act 2025 which gave effect to and went further than the Supreme Court’s judgment in the O’Meara case. 150,000 cohabiting couples/families could potentially benefit from its provisions. It is unlikely that Mr O’Meara would have gotten leave to apply for judicial review under the Civil Reform Bill proposals.

We have been making strenuous objections in relation to the judicial review proposals. We have been looking for consultation since the publication of the Kelly Report in 2020. We were very pleased to finally meet department officials some weeks ago who have indicated that they will take on board some of our concerns. We hope they will take on board all of our concerns and look forward to the promised consultation which has yet to happen. The Oireachtas Justice Committee have published a report on the Civil Reform Bill and its recommendations reflect FLAC’s concerns. We hope they will be adopted.

At the FLAC Justice Lecture in December 2025, Professor Colm O’Cinneide stated that “we find ourselves in an era where human rights are not as fashionable as they once were.” That resonates with our experience of the proposed reforms of judicial, the recent Housing Bill which will block many migrants form access to social housing and emergency accommodation (removing a vital safety net), and the stalling of the Equality Bill.

Colm also advised that we must “stay the course in making the case for rights, justice and the rule of law.”

FLAC will of course continue to “stay the course”. However, I feel like a broken record asking for a proper legal aid system. I am blue in the face saying it and you are all blue in the face hearing it.

It is unbelievably difficult to attract attention of policy-makers, politicians and the media to Civil Legal Aid and even harder to achieve meaningful change. Thank you, Minister, for coming to once again to hear our concerns. We welcome the commitment you are making to legal aid. It is important to remember that the Minority Report sets out that comprehensive, meaningful reform is doable, practical and cost effective.

Establishing a national legal information service that provides general and targeted legal information, a network of Community Law Centres, and targeted laws centres (for example, for people with disabilities) are comparatively cheap measure – which are potentially transformational for the most disadvantaged communities who experience the greatest unmet legal need. We know that access to justice services constitute an investment, as the State will save more money than they costs.

We hope that the Minister will adopt the recommendations of Minority Report, and the recommendations of the two Oireachtas Justice Committee reports to respond with urgency to the legal aid crisis.

We fervently hope that you will use this once in a generation opportunity to not just increase the resources of the Legal Aid Board, which is clearly necessary, but to finally establish a fit for purpose system of public legal assistance to meet the needs and to bring services to the most disadvantaged. The Civil Legal Aid system needs to be treated as a vital public service, not an add-on when resources allow.

Finally, I want to thank all of the FLAC Council members for their sterling ongoing support and hidden valuable work, in particular our chair Róisín Fitzpatrick who stepped back in August 2025 while on maternity leave and Fiona Donson who stepped up so willingly and with such grace to become Chairperson. I also want to pay tribute to FLAC’s staff for their incredible dedication, inspiration, whose work is reflected in these pages.

Thank you to all the staff who have made today happen - Gillian, Christopher, Liz, Féith, Conall and Colm.

I will now invite Erin Brogan, our Telephone Information and Referral Line Development Manager - whose job it is to field all the calls which we receive and who does so with zen-like serenity - to say a few words about the calls.