Criminal barristers across the country are taking part in a strike they are calling a “withdrawal of services” today. The action is over pay cuts introduced to their profession during the financial crisis of 2008.
They have been calling for the restoration of fees since 2016 but so far, they say, the Government has ignored the calls.
Senior Counsel Seamus Clarke, who is originally from Bailieboro, told the Joe Finnegan Show earlier that the “most substantial pay a criminal barrister receives is €1,144 for running cases at the circuit court for which they must prepare the case; read all the documentation; and do the first day of trial.
He said barristers are paid approximately €500 a day after this. He added the decision to withdraw their services was taken for the good of the criminal justice system, which he said, “is withering on the vine". The senior counsel, who had just left the steps of the criminal courts of justice in Dublin where he and his colleagues were protesting, explained: “The reason we are here today is that during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2011 cuts to the professional fees paid to barristers to the order of 28.5% and up to 69% in some cases were imposed.
“Of course,” Mr Clarke SC continued, “nobody had any quibble with that because we were in a financial emergency and like the rest of the public sector these cuts were imposed. But since 2016, when we’ve been engaging with the Government about restoring cuts imposed we’ve had no proper engagement and no proper engagement with the Department of Expenditure and Reform.”
He said that despite recommendations by the Department of Justice and the DPP to restore barristers’ fees “this has not occurred unlike the rest of the public sector. “So we’ve taken the unusual step of withdrawal of service to drive the message home that this is not sustainable,” he added.
Meanwhile, Mr Clarke explained that the Bar is a self-employed profession and “so every barrister not in court is losing money themselves”.
When asked why his colleagues could not defer their action until after this year’s budget, Seamus Clarke said, “we’ve been very patient since 2016 and added that further protests "cannot be ruled out."
