Almost 1,000 court cases affected by criminal barristers’ strike

Almost 1,000 court cases, including nearly 200 trials, have been affected by striking criminal barristers, the Justice Minister has said.

Naomi Long said “leveraging suffering serves no purpose” as she expressed concern at the effect the withdrawal of services by the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) was having on victims and their families.

The industrial action is part of a long-running dispute over fees for legal aid, which has seen crown court cases involving those who require legal aid effectively halted.

A derogation has been granted to allow the continuation of some trials, including that of the man accused of the murder of Natalie McNally in 2022, and the trial of a man accused of Chloe Mitchell’s murder in 2023.

In the Assembly, Mrs Long said she was “deeply concerned” about the “added stress” the withdrawal of services had placed on victims.

She also told UUP leader Jon Burrows that it was “factually inaccurate” to claim she had not accepted an offer of an accelerated review in mid-January that would have resolved the dispute.

“According to our most recent data, 965 cases have been impacted,” Ms Long told the Assembly.

“That is 195 trials, 469 arraignments and 301 plea and sentencing hearings have been affected since January 5.

“The number of victims, witnesses and indeed defendants affected will obviously be higher, and the impact on some will be incalculable.”

She said an independent accelerated review began on Friday to assess the outstanding issues and would be completed before April 27.

Asked by SDLP MLA Justin McNulty when the public can expect the dispute to be resolved, said she could not give a timeline.

“I would encourage him to ask the CBA when they intend to return to work,” she said.

“I would be keen to see it happen now, because, to be honest, their attendance at work or not will not influence the outcome of the accelerated review.”

Mr Burrows claimed the CBA suggested an accelerated review on January 13, and were “happy to do priority cases at that point”.

He said Mrs Long had “insisted that they could only go forward if they did a full resumption to work”.

“I’ve not informed the chamber of that because it is factually inaccurate,” she replied.

“It is true to say that the offer that was made for an accelerated review was contingent on a return to work.

“The only red line, however – because that was rejected out of hand by the CBA – the only red line I’ve had in this process is that the CBA would no longer be the body that would decide which cases were priority and which cases were not.

“And that is the only red line I have had.

“When we got together and agreed that in the wake of the meeting, which the member was at with Chloe Mitchell’s family, we were able to agree that that was the case and that would be the case, which is why that has now been instituted going forward.”

She said the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) will have “sole responsibility” for determining which high priority cases proceed, and added that the CBA should not have a role in this due to a “direct conflict of interest”.

“The important thing for me is that from this point onwards, it will not be the decision of the CBA which of the cases get a derogation. It will be the decision of the Public Prosecution Service (whether) there is an urgency to case.”

She added: “I don’t think that the CBA or ourselves want to be in this position again. I hope in future that we will have better working relations.”

Mrs Long was also asked in the Assembly whether the Domestic Homicide Review model could be widened to include domestic abuse-related deaths by suicide.

Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly said Mrs Long had acknowledged that the links between domestic abuse and suicide were “well established” and asked if she would move forward with a scoping exercise.

She replied that determining a “clear, causative” and “demonstrable” link between domestic abuse and suicide can be “highly complex” and “extremely difficult”.

“Unlike with domestic homicide, where a cause of death is directly attributable to another individual, domestic abuse-related suicides often, but not always, will involve multiple intersecting factors, whether that be mental ill health, previous trauma, substance misuse, broader personal or social pressures, and so determining whether domestic abuse was the primary contributing factor can therefore be very difficult.”