Calculating your contribution

Legal Advice and Legal Representation

In order to get legal advice of legal representation, we must undertake a means test of your financial circumstances to see if you qualify for our services. To qualify, you will need to have an annual disposable income of less than €18,000 and disposable assets of less than €100,000. We do not include the house you live in when calculating you assets. You may complete the statement of means form on you own, or staff in the law centre will help you to complete the for if you are unable to do so.

In most cases you will have a make a payment which we call a contribution.  The amount of the contribution(s) will depend on your disposable income and assets.

When you first see a solicitor you will have to pay an advice contribution. The minimum advice contribution is €30. Depending on your income, you might have to pay up to €150.

If we agree to represent you in Court, you must pay an aid contribution. The minimum aid contribution is €100.  Depending on your income and assets you might have to pay more.

You don't have to pay a contribution if:

• Tusla is asking the Court to allow it to take your children into State care or to allow its staff to supervise your children in your own home.
• You are taking or defending proceedings in the District Court for a barring order, safety order, protection order, or interim barring order
• You have been a victim of rape or sexual assault and require representation at the trial of the person who has been accused of committing the rape or sexual assault.

International protection (asylum)

If you're applying for legal aid to help you with a claim for international protection in Ireland, you'll only need to pay a contribution of €10.

Assessing your Income

The first step is for you to complete a statement of means on the application for legal services form.  You will be asked to give the following information on the form:

Income - for example wages, salary, social welfare payments (although some social welfare payments such as Child Benefit and Carer's Allowance are not included) pension and certain personal circumstances and also certain items of expenditure in order to decide what allowances may be offset against your income for the purpose of calculating you disposable income. No housing support measure, provided by any public body, will be treated as income either. Disposable income is income left after allowances such as the below:-

You willbe required to provide confirmation of your sources of income and outgoings by providing, for example:

• A copy of your latest payslip
• A copy of your social welfare slip
• A rent book/mortgage statement

How are my capital resources calculated?

The value of your family home is excluded for the assessment of your capital resources.  If your capital resources are more that €4,000 you must complete the statement of capital on the application form.  The following information is required:

• Capital - Your total capital of every nature, whether in the form of property, car, cash in hand, in the ban, investments or other resources and
• Debt - You may be given an allowance for certain debts that may be offset against capital for the purposes of arriving at disposable capital, or example, credit union loans.