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Legal Aid - can costs be awarded?

  • 05-10-2015 2:04pm
    #1
    Indricotherium
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,575 ✭✭✭


    If you are involved in civil litigation and are granted legal aid - can the other sides costs be awarded against you?

    Does the legal aid board vet cases as to their winability, or once you take a case against someone and fulfil a set of financial requirements do they have to provide assistance, even if your case is very weak.


Comments

  • #2
    Pat Mustard
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,554 ✭✭✭Pat Mustard


    Indricotherium wrote: »
    If you are involved in civil litigation and are granted legal aid - can the other sides costs be awarded against you?
    Yes. However, I suppose that most of the volume of work that is carried out by the Legal Aid Board is family law and in family law cases, it is less likely that an order for costs would be made.
    Indricotherium wrote: »
    Does the legal aid board vet cases as to their winability, or once you take a case against someone and fulfil a set of financial requirements do they have to provide assistance, even if your case is very weak.
    http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1995/act/32/section/24/enacted/en/html#sec24 The legislation states that legal aid shall not be granted unless:
    a reasonably prudent person, whose means were such that the cost of seeking such services at his or her own expense, while representing a financial obstacle to him or her would not be such as to impose undue hardship upon him or her, would be likely to seek such services in such circumstances at his or her own expense, and

    a solicitor or barrister acting reasonably would be likely to advise him or her to obtain such services at his or her own expense.

    So they use that test in assessing whether somebody should get legal aid for a particular matter.


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