![\"Naomi](\"https:\/\/www.irishlegal.com\/uploads\/NaomiLong-2022.jpg\")
<\/div>\nNaomi Long, Northern Ireland’s justice minister and leader of the Alliance Party<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
The run-up to next month\u2019s Northern Ireland Assembly elections has been dominated by the lingering impact of Brexit, with unionist opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol threatening to prevent the formation of a new power-sharing Executive. But Naomi Long, leader of the cross-community Alliance Party, is preoccupied with the unfinished business of her truncated term as justice minister. \u201cIt was a successful two years,\u201d she tells Irish Legal News<\/em>. \u201cBut the problem with success is that it breeds more ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mrs Long took the reins of the Department of Justice in January 2020 after the cross-party New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) deal restored power-sharing for the first time in three years. \u201cWe managed to get five substantive pieces of legislation through the Assembly, which is a record for any minister in any mandate,\u201d she says. \u201cThose bills are going to really impact on vulnerable victims and witnesses. It was my desire, after three years without an Assembly, to demonstrate what we could do in the Executive and what we could do in the Assembly when we were there and committed and working.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGiven the delicate political situation in Northern Ireland, there are no guarantees that we\u2019ll form another Executive [after the election],\u201d Mrs Long admits. \u201cI will be justice minister until a new justice minister is appointed \u2013 and at this stage, we don\u2019t know who that will be, whether it will be another Alliance minister, whether it will be me, or indeed, whether it will be from another party.\u201d Whoever takes on the role, however, will inherit a significant challenge: resourcing the administration of justice amid a tightening budget.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, when it emerged<\/a> that justice was the only department facing a funding cut under Northern Ireland\u2019s draft budget, the Law Society and the Bar Council responded with a stark warning<\/a> about the likelihood of \u201clegal aid deserts\u201d arising in local towns. \u201cThe current draft budget, as it has been left, was really inadequate, not just in terms of legal aid but right across the justice sector,\u201d Mrs Long agrees. \u201cWhile I understand that we are all trying to make ends meet in a difficult financial settlement, there is a certain level of funding that is required for justice to be able to meet its statutory functions. The amount that was set aside in the budget for justice was not sufficient to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have done our own analysis in terms of how many towns and so on would be affected,\u201d the minister adds. \u201cI don\u2019t think the picture is quite as stark as has been painted in terms of access, but it would definitely result in closure of a significant number of firms. In many rural communities, the relationships between solicitors\u2019 firms and their clients can go back generations, so it\u2019s not simply that you just go to a different solicitor \u2013 often families have worked with a particular solicitors\u2019 firm for many, many years and have strong ties. The loss of that business to the town or the village would be a significant blow to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n Last week\u2019s news that criminal barristers in England and Wales had begun industrial action<\/a> in protest of low pay has evoked memories of the battle fought by Northern Ireland lawyers against the last major reforms to legal aid. The dispute, which saw some solicitors join their barrister colleagues in withdrawing their services, ended in mediation in 2016 after the Bar Council and the Law Society failed to defeat the reforms by way of judicial review. The Department of Justice\u2019s relationship with the two bodies \u201chas improved dramatically\u201d since then, according to Mrs Long. \u201cI certainly don\u2019t want to see us in a situation where we\u2019re in conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe last time we had strike action here, we ended up in a situation where we had a backlog of about three months of work, which took over two years to clear,\u201d she points out. \u201cGiven that we\u2019re already trying to clear the backlogs from Covid, any kind of industrial action at this point in time could have catastrophic effects on that recovery. That isn\u2019t something that I would want to see, and it\u2019s certainly not something in my conversations with the Bar Council and the Law Society that they would desire either \u2013 but I totally understand that, when they are facing a situation where they may not be paid for work done for many months, they have to consider all their options. I would certainly want to be appealing to other parties, other ministers in government and to the Assembly more broadly to think very carefully about the impact that it will have on the legal system.\u201d<\/p>\n In bringing the legal aid dispute to a mediated end, the Department of Justice agreed to focus on prompt payment. \u201cThe difficulty we have at the moment is that the starting budget for legal aid is so far below our norms that it would be almost impossible for us to make up that gap in the various monitoring rounds during the year, and so the only way we could live within our budget is to slow down payments,\u201d Mrs Long says. By the end of 2023, that could mean practitioners waiting 44 weeks or more for payments. \u201cI don\u2019t believe that is reasonable or fair,\u201d she stresses.<\/p>\nLegal aid under the cosh<\/h3>\n
Lawyers facing delayed payments<\/h3>\n