Lynn Ruane
University of Dublin · Independent · Ireland
“The chairperson of the board of the Courts Service, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly, said that the rise in drugs cases of a less serious kind had increased the workload of the lower courts.”
“I remember I could barely write when I started studying addiction. I was 16 when I applied for an addiction studies course. They would not let me on it because they said I was too young and it was for adults. I fought and fought. I did not know how to write an essay. I had not engaged in school since I was about 12.”
“The world is watching how Ireland has done the most extensive interrogation of drugs policy ever seen, and is waiting in hope to see what we do next to make sure that we move with the evidence. It is not just opinion.”
“I join Senator McDowell in thanking all the people we should thank for the efficient and smooth running of these Houses. He ran through them all. Even if we have had a few ding-dongs over rulings on amendments and stuff, other than that, things have moved well, as they always do. I thank the staff across both Houses.”
“There are not many things I will claim some level of expertise in, but this is one where I will claim it. I have been obsessed with it since I was about 16. I look forward to coming back in the new year, and not just for 90 minutes. We need a substantial time to discuss this report, whether three hours, four hours or six hours.”
“It will contain all incidents of prohibited AI practices under Article 5 of the AI Act; all serious incidents of high-risk AI systems in the State, reported under Article 73; high-risk AI systems that are employed in critical infrastructure; and any other AI-related incidents or notifications in the State required to be reported under the…”
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“Comparing criminal aid cases to more simplistic, straightforward cases is not a good mechanism or measurement for how we ensure people have good, solid access to justice. A principle I believe in, as do the Department and many other justice bodies, is prison as a last resort. If we have prison as a last resort, especially when it comes to criminal legal aid cases, what we are doing is creating a scenario where there is an expectation to have matters dealt with more quickly to match non-criminal aid cases. As the Minister of State can imagine, some of those cases are not going to cut having three or four appearances in court such as, for instance, people experiencing addiction, language barriers, people with severe mental health issues or intellectual disabilities or whatever the complexity of the case and the need may be.”
“I want to raise the issue of the planned introduction of a flat fee for criminal legal aid. I note similar flat fees have been introduced in other areas of law such as family law and they have been heavily criticised. What particularly concerns me in relation to these proposals is a flat fee of €455 regardless of the number of appearances before the court. This is not so much in relation to a debate or conversation about how much legal representatives should or should not earn, but access to justice for some of the most vulnerable people who may end up in front of the courts. When these proposals came in, one of the assessments made in relation to 350,000 cases in the District Court from 2022 to 2023 found that the average number of appearances in criminal legal aid, CLA, cases is 5.04 compared with 3.24 for non-criminal aid cases.”
“Members might not believe it, but I am quite sentimental, and when I was in that briefing a few weeks ago and they said that there were only 400 brains in the brain bank, I was extremely proud that my dad's brain was one of those brains. It also got me thinking about the infrastructure and why there are only 400 brains, especially when the research is so important. I also learned that the tissue that is kept for that research is held in the brain bank for many years, so it made me feel somewhat comforted that somewhere in the country there is a bit of my dad's brain tissue still kicking on, which is nice, but we should also have a conversation about the infrastructure around the brain bank, how important it is for research and what it needs to be able to have much more of a campaign on the importance of donating one's brain.”
“I was at a briefing on early onset Parkinson's a few weeks back. There was a female doctor there from Dublin Brain Bank which is something that is quite close to my heart. In 2012, I sat with my dad and asked him if he would be interested in donating his brain to the brain bank. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson's. We thought that it was misdiagnosis, and we fought it. Donating his brain to the brain bank not only gave us confirmation that we were right that there was a misdiagnosis - he actually had progressive supranuclear palsy, PSP, which is locked-in syndrome - and his treatment would have very different, it also allowed my dad's brain to be used for research.”
“I hope that over the coming months, or at the least before the summer recess, this House can have statements on early onset Parkinson's disease. It often gets very caught up in the conversation on later age Parkinson's, but it is very different in its presentation, the interventions that are required, the impact it has on starting a family and on the person's work life. A person's life can become very impoverished quickly because they cannot work or gain work. I happen to somehow have a few people in my life who have been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's, including one person as young as 31. It has such a massive impact, and this House needs to have a stand-alone conversation in order that Members can give it the attention it deserves and we can begin to invest in supporting people with early onset Parkinson's.”
“People can surmise and guess all day about what happened, why he was shoplifting or why he was there. Regardless of any of those variables, the man is dead. If this was anybody else who went into a shop, was accused of shoplifting and was dead at the end, everybody in this Chamber would be in here at least acknowledging the man, his family, his friends and the fact of his death. No investigation is going to change that. Whatever happened was completely wrong and should never happen again in this country.”
“I am stating the fact that a Congolese man is dead who went into a shop and was accused of shoplifting. That is in all of the media reports. No amount of investigations can ever explain or give any sort of reason that would be acceptable that a man would go into the shop and end up dead for suspected shoplifting. Whether there is an investigation and due process, as a country and as people we should never ever be okay that excessive force would be used by anybody where somebody ends up dead. Regardless of investigations going on, the facts are the facts. There is nothing that can be found in that investigation, to my mind, that will ever make that okay. Regardless of crimes in this country, we do not have corporal punishment or the death penalty.”
“I am more than a little surprised that I am the first today to speak to the incident outside Arnotts on Friday. I certainly hope that I am not the last to actually recognise and acknowledge that man, who was by all means alleged to have been shoplifting. I do not know what on earth can be shoplifted out of any shop that would ever result in the death of a man-----”
“If the Department of justice, the police, the Senators in this room or any legislators and drafters do not see the relevance of section 3 in this Bill, this Bill should not come before us at all because they need to understand the Bill in its entirety, and its impact.”
“They do not exist in isolation, yet this House has ruled my amendment out of order and not allowed it even to be discussed. This is one of the main stop-and-search powers that are abused this country. I do not want to wait until we get to that section to bring it up because what I want to acknowledge is that we have a problem here in relation to what is ruled out of order. If we do take a few minutes to discuss the reinsertion of Senator McDowell's amendment, I also need to challenge very hard the fact that it is bad law to stand in this House to say that section 3 is irrelevant to this Bill. It actually makes no sense.”
“Section 3 is an integral part of stop and search in this country. The Garda has no bar to have proof of anything to use stop and search under section 3. Now, we also have the ruling-out of an amendment saying it is irrelevant to the Bill - a stop-and-search power irrelevant to the Bill. Who is making these decisions? I have been legislating in this House for ten years and I can tell the Minister now, when I write amendments, I do not write them without taking in the Bill in its entirety and all the other Bills to which this Bill is related. Part 2, on page 9, describes "a controlled drug (within the meaning of section 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977), the possession of which is in contravention of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977". Section 3 is needed for section 2.”
“It does save the State money because if the Garda is going to keep stopping and searching people, that creates a cost on the State even in terms of policing and wasting the time of gardaí on profiling people when they could actually be using policing resources to investigate real crime instead of abusing stop and search. If there is going to be a moment to reflect on whether ethnicity should be included here or not in terms of it being ruled out of order in the discussion, I would also like to acknowledge that my amendment to repeal section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act has been ruled out of order because it was considered to be irrelevant. That section is mentioned in the Bill we are dealing with today. It provides for a stop-and-search power, the use of which will actually be expanded when the rest of these laws come into force.”
“Over the last few years, we have heard a huge amount, including in official reports, about the abuse of stop and search among particular communities, not only around ethnicity but also in relation to particular demographics and communities. We grew up being regularly stopped and searched as children. We did not even have to have an adult present. We were stopped and searched while walking to the shop or through the park if there were more than two or three people. If we are not willing to capture that, we are not willing to acknowledge that we have poor policing practices.”
“We do not reduce shame by dehumanising people in prison and having them go to the toilet in front of each other and sleep on mattresses and not be able to access healthcare. We actually compound the shame and increase the chances of somebody becoming more violent. That is the opposite of what we want to achieve. I am hopeful in looking at the community sanctions system. I would like to look at community courts, broader drug courts and community courts in general. I visited them in New York, in Red Hook and so on and there are some great models. We need to be ambitious. I do not think we should say prison will always be a feature; we should be working very hard to make that not a reality.”
“If you had the power to change your individual circumstance, you would not have experienced the amount of poverty, trauma and dropping out of school beforehand, because you would have done it then. When we look at rehabilitation of an individual, we have to ask what rehabilitation of society looks like. What does rehabilitation of the equality of one's conditions look like and how do we begin to address that? If we do not do that, prison will remain a feature. All the evidence says that violent crime especially is driven by shame, humiliation and not being able to meet one's economic needs. I want to believe in a world where we reduce those violent crimes and reduce having to see the number of victims we see and the loss of life.”
“It is that agency of an individual trying to correct his or her own individual self with the little agency he or she actually has in an environmental situation. It is the institution versus the agency of an individual. We can talk about the rehabilitation of individuals all we want but if we do not correct the conditions that actually contributed to the offending in the first place, the person goes back out into the exact same conditions and the structural forces of poverty and inequality are so big that it is not going to take very long before his or her individual agency as a person to try to do better is completely consumed by that structural inequality and those barriers and by everything that exists and gets in his or her way of being able to have any sort of power to change his or her individual circumstance.”
“If a 12-year-old can start to think about it in this way, it has to be possible for whole governments and society to begin to think about it a different way. I wrote an article about it before based on all the letters I received as a teenager from my friends who had been sent to Oberstown and to St. Pat's, that is, children who were put in an adult institution in St. Pat's and on how they were treated. In all of the letters, there was a common theme. There was this aspiration among these teenage boys that when they got out, they were going to go to Youthreach or to go back to school and get their junior certificate or were going to try to get a job. There were these aspirations. I remember looking at that and asking how does that not materialise when someone actually gets out.”
“It is not deterministic; it is not just because a person experiences poverty that it is determined he or she will end up in prison but it creates the conditions where he or she is going to encounter particular experiences that may end up with him or her experiencing the criminal justice system. We have to go back and look at the structural inequality that exists in relation to poverty. We have to be able to reduce poverty in a country that, on the one hand is saying it is so wealthy but on the other, inequality is entrenched and deep in certain communities. Prison has played a funny role in my life my entire life. I must have been only about 12 years of age when I started questioning the concept of prison.”
“As for when the level of hard-on-crime rhetoric, sentencing and structural violence goes up, if we look at the violence in America, which has one of the harshest penalty systems in terms of three strikes and you will get a big, long, lengthy sentence, as well as at the number of people in prison in America, it is still one of the most violent places. It has some of the harshest laws when it comes to committing crimes so we see that does not work. What we need to go back to then is looking at the fact that a large portion of people in prisons experience poverty. I know for many of us we will go to the addiction piece but addiction is actually a symptom of poverty. We need to take another step back from addiction and drug use to poverty. Poverty is one of the core drivers.”
“I read two books by Professor James Gilligan a couple of years ago. He is a psychologist in some of the most high-security lockdown prisons of violent offenders in the United States. One of his books is called Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous Than Others . It looks at that structural violence piece and under the Democrats and Republicans, over a 100-year period, neither of them when in power reduced the number of violent crimes committed in the country. They slightly reduced under Democrats but not enough for it to be significant.”
“It is so concerning because we have to be able to separate people's individual behaviour that we want to interrupt so they are not offending. However, to separate that from the broader picture and to have a safer society, we have to think beyond the individual behaviour. When we send somebody to prison for a time, it does not actually make society as a whole safer if that is a victim's rights or justice piece. Somebody has committed a crime. In wider society, imprisonment has never reduced criminality. I have referenced the book by Albert Camus, Reflections on the Guillotine , before. People were literally beheaded on front squares in a public spectacle as a warning not to commit crimes and people still committed crimes. It does not actually reduce offending. How do we actually get to the root causes?”
“It might seem like pie-in-the-sky thinking but for me, it is about reducing the number of victims who exist in the first place to break the cycles of victimisation. In 2024, some 77% of new committals were sentenced to less than a year, that is, 77% of people are in prison for crimes so minor they do not warrant a sentence above six to 12 months. Nobody gets intervention in a prison in six to 12 months. A prisoner does not access school or addiction counselling within six to 12 months. We are basically warehousing 77% of people in big buildings across the country and are then saying we have a rehabilitative system when prisoners are literally just warehoused as though in a massive factory that is supposed to do something but nobody knows what.”
“I welcome many of the Minister’s comments today. Some of this stuff I have said before, but I will repeat it. The concept of prison - many people have said today that prison will always have a place in our society. I feel there is something quite defeatist about that in terms of reducing offending to the point that there are no violent crimes. That might seem naive, but my hope for humanity and how we develop as people is that we actually look at the core drivers of those most violent crimes as well so that we are not just accepting them as being something that is going to happen in society and so we will always need prisons. That is not a soft-on-crime approach; it is an approach in which the instances of violent crimes in Ireland are so reduced that we do ourselves out of prison systems.”
“If that energy is organised, it does not have to stop at protest. It can move into something more lasting. Protest, disruption and solidarity matter, but what matters most is what we do in the moment after, whether we let it pass or build on it. To opt out is to hand over legitimate desire for change to somebody else. Empty hands on their own are not enough, but when people come together and stand side by side to use both their voice and their vote, they can become something much more powerful. Governments respond to concentrations of voters because that threatens their power or position and how they can make decisions.”
“People are under real pressure but they also have something others do not: they have visibility, they have organisation and they can disrupt in a way that gets noticed. What stood out to me was the response. Ordinary people were showing up and standing alongside roads, supporting farmers, hauliers and truckers. There was a sense of shared frustration but also a shared recognition. That recognition should be built on and should be reciprocal from those who stood there back towards those who have less. It made me think about where real power lies, and moments like this can be more than reaction. They can be a starting point where people begin to connect their experiences of the cost of living, housing, homelessness and insecure work and begin to see these are not separate issues but are part of the same system.”
“The first is by Ursula Le Guin, who writes about people with empty hands, who own nothing and therefore have nothing to lose, and how there is a kind of freedom in that, a freedom to imagine change and to challenge what exists. There are also huge limits to that, but it is a worthwhile concept to think about. The second is by Christopher Galloway, who reminds us that, in the real world, the people with the least often feel the most constrained and it is hard to organise when you are stretched just trying to get by. It is hard to be heard when you are invisible. The working class, including all those who live side by side in communities, are constrained by daily survival. That is why the protests in Dublin have stayed with me.”
“This week and over the weekend, I was in Hungary observing and monitoring the elections, and looking back home at the fuel protests here in Ireland, I was thinking about change and how change happens. Protest, by its nature, is meant to be disruptive. If it is not disruptive, it risks becoming little more than State-sanctioned gatherings. Real protest unsettles things. It draws attention and forces people to look. At its most powerful, it directs that pressure upwards toward the State and its institutions rather than downward at those who are already struggling. I was thinking about two books this week, both with the term "the dispossessed" in the title.”
“On a point of information, I wish to correct the record. I will not come back on everything the Minister has said. When I referred to deportations, it was not in the context of people who were not complying with deportation orders. I was referring to cases where the deportation may be scheduled for some date in the future. The justice committee heard evidence from healthcare providers about people arriving into pharmacies, etc., to receive to their medication. It is not that they have not complied; it is that there some people's access to medication has been stopped abruptly. I do not think that is the intention of the State; it is just a gap.”
“There is a real gap here in terms of treating people with dignity and respect and from a human rights lens, especially in relation to a person's health status.”
“The individual is not allowed to continue with their healthcare, which could be very dangerous for them and, depending on the type of medication, others within their family or surrounding area. There is also a gap in understanding. When in the asylum process, you may not have the right to work but can access healthcare through certain channels. That entitlement is effectively being removed. Within this legislation, we need not only to correct that but also to ensure that if people are on particular medications or in receipt of particular healthcare interventions while in Ireland, these will continue, and that if they are deported on being refused asylum, they will be entitled to their medication until they are re-established.”
“I will be very brief and will not go over all the same ground that Senator Alice-Mary Higgins did. However, I want to make a point on deportation and the training on and understanding of health. Even without this legislation, currently in Ireland if you receive a deportation order, you will have your access to healthcare, including medication, immediately revoked. A person could be on cancer medication, antipsychotic medication or diabetes medication. When a person goes through the asylum process and receives a deportation order, there is a period of time between receiving it and being deported. At the start of that period, a person's access to healthcare immediately stops.”
“I know that the advocacy bodies have said that facial recognition for age verification should only be used as a last resort. I would suggest that it should not be used at all. If it is used, what happens when that child turns 18? Does the biometric data on the child continue to be stored or is it wiped?”
“The Garda, which will have the role of implementing the Bill, cannot confirm how facial recognition technology will be used. There are human rights concerns at a larger scale about how facial recognition is used and how data is stored and used for the training of AI or for the profiling or surveillance of people across not only Ireland, but Europe as well. There is also a concern about how we understand facial recognition to work. If those in the Garda cannot say how recording devices, facial recognition and biometric analysis will be used under the Bill, how are immigration officers, who we do not know who they are, expected to use this legislation in respect of facial recognition technology? I echo everything that Senator Higgins said.”
“Obviously, that is extremely concerning when we think of what Senator Higgins said about the high risk of the misidentification of black faces and also the dangers to children in terms of what happens to that data. The other legislation that this intersects with matters in terms of people's rights around their data and facial recognition technology. The recording devices legislation is also en route . Regarding this, we have asked in the justice committee a number of times of An Garda Síochána how the Garda Síochána (Recording Devices) (Amendment) Bill is going to be used as regards facial recognition technology. In the last meeting of the committee, I provided several scenarios to An Garda Síochána and asked if they were what would constitute facial recognition technology in terms of biometric analysis.”
“Human rights concerns are constantly being raised about the use of facial recognition in any area, let alone in relation to international protection. We need to remember that other Bills also intersect with this. The digital omnibus regulation is on the way. This will completely debase not only the transparency, but also the datasets on which biometric analysis is used to train AI systems. Coming through an international protection or asylum process, a person is not really going to assert their rights to not have their biometric data or facial recognition data used for identification or profiling purposes. I hope not, but that is what will happen in terms of the level of data. The digital omnibus regulation creates wider exemptions in which biometric analysis can be used.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to provide for the administrative assessment, by the Revenue Commissioners, of liabilities of certain persons to pay periodic maintenance in respect of a child; to provide for a standard methodology for making such an assessment; to provide for the enforceability of such assessments in certain circumstances; to empower the Revenue Commissioners to depart from a standard methodology for making an assessment of child maintenance in certain circumstances; to provide for updated assessments of child maintenance in certain circumstances; to prohibit, in the interests of the common good, the making of certain applications to court unless certain circumstances apply; to provide for appeals from certain determinations and decisions of the Revenue Commissioners; and to provide for related matters.”
“This legislation represents a practical and necessary reform and it will reduce conflict between parents, ease pressure on the courts and, most importantly, improve outcomes for children.”
“The Bill also reflects recommendations made over many years, including by the child maintenance review group in 2022 and subsequent policy reviews. It also draws on successful international models, particularly that in New Zealand where child maintenance is assessed administratively by the equivalent of the Revenue Commissioners. This approach has reduced conflict, improved reliability of payments and created better support for children and families. The Child Maintenance Bill 2026 takes inspiration from this approach. By allowing Revenue to assess maintenance using reliable income data, and by creating a standardised transparent process, we can ensure that child maintenance is fair, consistent and focused on the child's needs.”
“Raising a child requires continuous financial support, and often one parent or carer bears the majority of this responsibility in care and finance. Child maintenance payments are essential to protecting the child's best interests but the current system is complex, lengthy and adversarial. The census in 2022 showed that 17% of family households were headed by lone parents, the majority of whom were women. These families are disproportionately affected by poverty, deprivation and housing insecurity. In June 2025 more than half of the families in emergency accommodation were found to be headed by one parent. This highlights the importance of child maintenance not only as a family law issue but as a measure to counter child poverty.”
“It seeks to establish a fair, consistent and less adversarial system for assessing child maintenance. Under the proposal, the Revenue Commissioners would conduct administrative child maintenance assessments, using standard formulae prescribed by the Minister for justice, and issue orders for payments before parties would proceed to court. The Bill does not remove the courts' role; rather, it complements it. Where both parties accept the Revenue assessment, it becomes a binding agreement like a court order. Where either party rejects the assessment, the matter proceeds to court as happens today. In this way we maintain judicial oversight while creating a more accessible and efficient pathway for families. The need for reform is clear.”
“I propose an amendment to the Order of Business of the Seanad today, that No. 12, the Child Maintenance Bill 2026, be taken before No. 1. The Child Maintenance Bill has taken many years of work since I was elected to the House. I acknowledge the significant contribution of the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers in developing its provisions. A majority of female Senators have signed up to the legislation. While it is disappointing that Government Members have not formally joined at this stage, I remain hopeful it can still be a shared reform across the Oireachtas, as it has been discussed and supported for a number of years by all in the House with full women's caucus support. The purpose of the Bill is straightforward but deeply important.”
“These are not people who are initially employed by the State. It is possible to apply to be an ICE officer with very few checks, with a person’s ideologies or whatever they think not being taken into account. As Senator Higgins said, this is not taken into account in relation to training. We must be very clear on who we intend to be immigration officers. If they detain somebody who does not have identification and must prove who they are, where are we saying they are going to be detained? How is that going to play out in reality? I also reiterate the point about the need to produce a warrant and say exactly who you are before you start detaining people and stopping people to prove their identity.”
“There is power here that would allow immigration officers to detain somebody until they can prove who they are. Basically, we would have Irish citizens or people in the international protection application system being held to prove whether they should or should not be here in Ireland. It is a scary prospect to think that could happen and we should make sure we do not allow for this in this legislation. We spoke earlier about the accountability mechanism of legal counsel. What will be the accountability mechanism for immigration officers if the State enters into a contract? Who are we saying the State would enter into a contract with for people to become immigration officers? I read an article a few months back by a journalist in the United States who did an investigation and mapped out how easy it was to become an ICE officer.”
“I will briefly reiterate some of the points made by Senator Higgins. Whatever the intention of what we do here, it is obviously about how it can be applied, even without that being the intent. It is very worrying for me that the State or the Department can enter into contracts in relation to immigration officers. I think it needs to be said on this floor but also captured in the legislation that we do not end up with a system of privatised immigration officers. I know it feels hard to imagine a scenario here, but we do only have to look at the videos on our phones and elsewhere to see where people in the western world are being racially profiled, especially because of the colour of their skin. What will happen if people do not have their ID on them, for whatever reason or they do not have a way to prove in that very moment who they are?”
“Amendment No. 269 seeks the deletion of “and the same social welfare”, and the substitution of ", social welfare”. Can I clarify that this is in relation to successful IP applications? Are we then removing the equality of social welfare access by removing “and the same social welfare”, and substituting ", social welfare” even though the applications are successful? What is intended by the removal of “and the same social welfare”?”
“If I were a legal counsel and engaged with someone and went through criteria and procedures with them, and I, a legal counsel but not a barrister or solicitor, determined that Ireland was not the member state responsible for this individual, would that person then automatically be transferred to another member state or would we at that point introduce proper representation from a legal perspective to make that serious legal determination about where someone's international protection application should be processed? I want to understand in a practical way. If the Minister was not a barrister or solicitor but was a legal counsellor, what would happen if he were to meet that individual and make that determination under amendment No. 14 in respect of the member state's responsibility? I want to understand in practical terms.”
“I want to put it in more practical terms and to understand it in a step-by-step manner for my own understanding. Amendment No. 14, at paragraph (c)(iv), provides for "guidance on and explanation of the criteria and procedure for determining the Member State responsible in accordance with Part 4". Are we saying that in a scenario where somebody is provided with legal counselling and where that person is not a regulated barrister or solicitor, in the contact between that legal counsel and the individual who is seeking international protection, the person providing legal counsel can make a determination or an assessment as to what member state is responsible for the international protection applicant? Where does that person then send that information? Where does that assessment go?”
“These people are in the most vulnerable cohort of international protection applicants. It is not appropriate that legal counsellors should give information about this. In order to be able to give such information and guidance, legal counsellors would first have to ask questions to ascertain that a person is an under-age minor, or otherwise vulnerable. Without proper training, legal counsellors might retraumatise a vulnerable person. This cohort in particular needs legal advice and assistance at the first stage of the process.”
“They will not be able to stop at providing legal counselling; they will also have to provide legal advice and representation. Without legal aid for that, it is not clear how it would work. As legal counsellors are not legally qualified persons - or if they are, they will not be acting in that capacity - they will not be covered by professional indemnity insurance, which means that as soon as someone asks for tailored individual advice about their particular application, the legal counsellor will have to decline to provide it. Finally, the proposed new section 11B(4)(e) provides that legal counsellors can provide information and guidance on "the rights and obligations of applicants who are unaccompanied minors or in need of special procedural guarantees".”
“The Bill proposes to amend the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995 to include a definition of "legal counselling". Under the proposed new section 11B(1), the Legal Aid Board will decide who has the relevant "knowledge, experience, qualifications, training or expertise to provide legal counselling". To put it another way, it will decide who will not do so. There will be no State regulation of legal counsellors. It will be left up to the Legal Aid Board. Legal counsellors will then be unregulated in this country. The proposed new section 11B(2) will allow the Legal Aid Board to contract legal counselling to "a person contracted by the Board". This could mean private solicitors or barristers. However, solicitors and barristers have professional duties and obligations to their clients.”