Record waiting times for appointments with Legal Aid Board solicitors are likely to increase even further as a result of the decision to relocate the board's headquarters in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, FLAC - the free legal advice service - has warned.
Waiting times at the board's 30 legal centres have more than doubled in the past 18 months, from an average of three months to 71/2 months.
By the end of last June, delays of at least 10 months could be found in more than a third of the centres. The worst case was Newbridge, Co Kildare, where it took 22 months to secure an appointment with a legal aid solicitor.
Ms Maureen Maguire, a Free Legal Advice Centres solicitor, said it was "bizarre that the relocation is being mooted at this time of crisis.
"It is going to have major financial implications as a lot of staff are not going to want to move, and the board will have to recruit and train new people. We would prefer to see more law centres opened and more staff taken on rather than this kind of upheaval."
As well as worsening the problem of waiting times, she said the move from Dublin to the Minister for Justice's home town would further undermine staff morale.
"Staff are trying to cope as best they can with the waiting lists and this will come as another blow."
The two unions representing workers at the board said most of their members would not move from Dublin to Kerry. Ms Maguire said that having to recruit and train more than 40 replacements would be disruptive and costly. "The work these people are doing is quite complex. They have to apply a means and merit test to every case. Training for a few weeks is not really adequate."
She said the move would also undermine efforts aimed at cutting the waiting lists such as the recruitment of new solicitors and the introduction of a proposed private practitioners' scheme.
The board is in negotiation with the Law Society about this scheme, under which certain types of district court work would be passed to private practitioners, thus freeing board solicitors for other matters.
Ms Maguire said creating a panel of private solicitors would be a huge task, made more difficult by the move to Kerry.
A spokesman for the Minister said the board would have to pay for any relocation costs such as the purchase of new office supplies and fittings, as well as new recruitment and training programmes. The Office of Public Works has responsibility for purchasing an appropriate premises.
The board's grant was increased from £9.6 million in 1998 to £12.9 million this year. The 1999 grant including £1 million for legal services for asylum-seekers.
The board's workload has also increased, partly due to a rise in divorce cases. It is due to deal with 1,400 such cases this year, compared to 1,300 last year and 938 in 1997.
Ms Maguire said: "I don't think the Government really calculated what effect the introduction of divorce would have on legal services."
She said that while the board gave priority to domestic violence, childcare and child abduction cases, many urgent hearings were inevitably postponed because of over-stretched resources.
"People looking for help are already in a traumatic situation. Then, to be told they will have to wait another year just to see a solicitor adds to their distress and uncertainty, especially when there are children involved."
About 90 per cent of cases dealt with by the board relate to family law matters such as access, custody and property disputes.
The board intends to publish a report on the implications of the move to Cahirciveen before the end of the month. Its chief executive, Mr Frank Goodman, said it would not comment publicly on the issue in the meantime.
When the move was announced last month, it warned the disruption and dislocation would "impede the capacity of the board to effectively manage the service".
