The State’s expenditure on the criminal legal aid scheme is set to top €120 million in 2025, up by a third on last year.
The Department of Justice had originally set aside €99.04 million to fund the criminal legal aid system in 2025 with the vast majority of the amount earmarked for lawyers’ fees.
However, the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, recently sought an additional €21.5 million in a supplementary estimate after the spend for the first nine months of the year had increased by 30 per cent year on year.
Figures provided by the Department of Justice show that the criminal legal aid spend to the end of September was €87.76 million, up €20 million – or 29.6 per cent – on the €67.68 million spend for the corresponding period in 2024.
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The monthly breakdown shows that €13.37 million was spent on criminal legal aid in July alone compared with a spend of €9.02 million in July 2024, while the spend in May 2025 totalled €12.14 million compared with an outlay of €10.89 million in May 2024.
The projected €120.5 million outlay on criminal legal aid follows the implementation in January of this year of an 8 per cent increase in the fees paid to barristers and solicitors under the scheme.
That came after the Government allocated an additional €9 million in fees paid under the scheme after barristers withdrew their labour in days of protest at the criminal courts last year in reaction to the failure by Government to restore a 10 per cent cut in rates imposed in 2011.
In 2024, solicitors and barristers on the criminal legal aid scheme received €84.08 million in fees, which was down marginally on the then record €84.9 million paid out in 2023.
The overall spend on criminal legal aid for 2024 – which also includes the funding of expert court reports – totalled €89.45 million.
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Dublin-based solicitor Michael Hennessy said the projected record spend “is not some kind of bonanza for criminal lawyers whose work is largely vocational and who are paid at an infinitely lower rate than colleagues in other legal areas”.
Mr Hennessy was the top-earning solicitor on the Criminal Legal Aid Panel in 2024 when he received €842,221 (including VAT). He was commenting on the department’s projection that this year’s spend will narrowly exceed €120 million.
The increase, he said, “is reflective of the sheer number of people coming before the courts as evidenced by the appointment of additional judges, daily reports of prison overcrowding and the increased prosecution of new types of offences, for instance those arising from social media and online fraud, while old problems such as homelessness, mental health, drugs and marital breakdown seem only to have worsened”.
Asked about the increase, a Department of Justice spokesman said the criminal legal aid scheme is demand-led.
He said there has been a significant increase in the granting of legal aid over the past number of years, and a corresponding increase in expenditure.
He said the “increases in the complexity and amount of disclosure which needs to be reviewed in criminal cases and the number of legal aid certificates granted have had a significant impact on criminal legal aid expenditure”.
The 8 per cent increase in fees was in addition to the 10 per cent increase secured in Budget 2024, he said.
