PEOPLE IN his community felt the structure of society, including the legal system, was against them, Fr Peter McVerry told a conference on access to justice at the weekend.
The conference was organised by the Bar Council to discuss its voluntary assistance scheme, where barristers offer their services free to voluntary organisations, including those providing legal services. The services include advice to the organisations themselves, as well as advice and representation for their clients.
Fr McVerry, whose trust assists young homeless people in breaking the cycle of homelessness, said one boy ended up in court for stealing a bottle of orange, worth €1. “He was homeless for the last six years and his homelessness was ignored. Yet when he stole a bottle of orange the whole structure of the law came down on him.”
In a recent 10-year period there had been 3,183 prosecutions for welfare fraud, worth €43 million. This had led to 48 people being jailed for 12 years in total, he said.
Yet in the same period there were only 39 prosecutions for tax evasion worth €2.25 billion. These led to six people being jailed for a total of 3¾ years.
“People think the law operates to ensure they will not get justice. It is seen as being used by the wealthy to protect their own interests.”
He said the Kenny report on land use could have transformed the property market here, but it was shot down on the basis that it was unconstitutional.
Noeline Blackwell, director of the Free Legal Advice Centres, said the poorer people were, the more regulated their lives were by the State. “The poorest are extremely highly regulated,” she said. “Social welfare recipients are regulated by community welfare officers. Immigrants are governed by a series of bureaucratic rules.
“The poorer you are, the more the law comes down on top of you, and the more you need assistance to deal with it.”
Yet the lack of adequate State funding for civil legal aid meant those in most need of it did not have access to justice, she added.
Damien Peelo, of the Irish Travellers Movement, said the organisation had had the assistance of well-intentioned solicitors who worked on a pro bono basis, but they had realised this was not enough, and had set up the Travellers Law Centre, employing a solicitor.
“What is needed is for people from a traditional travelling background to get into the legal system to become solicitors and barristers. That is starting to happen,” he said.
Opening the conference, former president and former UN commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, described three initiatives she was involved in that were pursuing access to justice, especially in developing countries.
There were four pillars of justice, she said. The first was the rule of law and access to justice. The second was property rights, where people did not have the right to the land they lived on. The third was labour rights and the fourth was business rights, whereby the poor could develop their own businesses, access credit and form contracts.