REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE FLAC
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE ON THE OCCASION OF THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE FREE LEGAL ADVICE CENTRES (FLAC)
Dia dhíbh a chairde. Tá an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anseo ar an ócáid speisialta seo. Míle bhuíochas díbh as an gcuireadh agus an fáilte a thug sibh dom.
Good evening everyone, many thanks for your warm welcome and for the invitation to join this celebration of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Free Legal Advice Centres and of the four decades of service since, to access to justice, equality and human rights. Once upon a time, when the now very distinguished legal eminences David Byrne, Ian Candy, Vivian Lavan and Denis McCullough were law students, there was no system of state civil legal aid, little interest in constructing one, access to justice was the prerogative of the wealthy or the randomised gift of the not inconsiderable pro-bono work of the legal profession. Law students were more likely to advocate free beer and to be found in the pursuit of it until the arrival on the scene of our heroes, David, Ian, Vivian and Denis, all of whom are with us this evening. Instead of the usual all-consuming male student pursuits of chasing women or footballs, interspersed with commando raids on the library a week before the tyranny of exams, these four set themselves, their peers, the legal profession and our country a new challenge and a new agenda. They set up FLAC, a volunteer, student run organisation designed at first to offer free legal advice to those who could not afford it.
From the moment its doors first opened FLAC was deluged. The unmet needs of so many of our citizens became undeniably obvious as thousands sought the only help available to them. The FLAC volunteers became advocates not just for those individuals but for a society where equality of access to justice was a reality. It was their pressure that provoked political change, their advocacy that brought epoch changing cases before the courts, in particular the legendary Airey case which, with the great help of my predecessor Mary Robinson, was to set the scene for a new statutory Legal Aid Board.
Those victories were hard won and they brought pressures and changes to FLAC which saw its fortunes take a battering in the early 1980’s but remarkably it survived, adapted and grew into the strong and independent human rights organisation which we celebrate today. Nowadays it is a professional organisation with both full time professional staff and a 400 strong nationwide army of volunteer professional lawyers who keep its ethos alive and its focus firm.
The 70 centres it serves throughout the country tell their own story of the remarkable growth, vindication and integrity of what started life as a student project and the needs that it still exists to serve. They also tell us how important it is that in every generation there are men and women who don’t just see the problem but who have the civic commitment and conscience that drives them to construct solutions even with the most modest of resources.
FLAC’s original mission of students providing free legal advice has long since mutated. To the extent that your work has been substantially augmented, though not replaced, by government provided services, you can take considerable credit and pride in a job of proving and persuasion that was well done. The legal world so familiar to many of us here is often still impenetrable and frightening to laymen and women. FLAC, possibly because it was set up by students still trying to get their own heads around the language and practices of the law, has always had a huge sensitivity to that public fear and sense of exclusion. Part of its mission has been to be the interpreter, guide, demystifier and friend to those who would otherwise have felt like outsiders.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said that “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice”. These are the words of a man who had a profound understanding of justice. He was also aware that when laws fail in this purpose they become, as he put it, “the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress”. FLAC unblocked a lot of those dams, with what Seamus Heaney’s poem From the Canton of Expectation, describes as “intelligences brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.”
Padraig O’Morain in his account – The History of the Free Legal Advice Centres 1969–2003 – said that, “There is little doubt that the social and legal landscape have benefited immeasurably from the work of the law students who set up that first legal advice centre in Mountjoy Square in 1969.” Those first four and all who have followed them since can take a righteous pride this night in what they started and what they sustain. It was a noble pursuit from the outset, noble and penniless. It could only ever gain momentum through the generosity of others. Those four believed in their peers and in their profession and that faith has been rewarded in these forty years of FLAC.
The names are too many to mention so to all who have made FLAC’S business their business I say a huge thank-you and to those who will carry its work towards its Golden Jubilee, I wish you well. To those four young men whose subsequent glittering and distinguished careers would bring them national and international renown, I hope the enduring robustness and determination of that, once fragile, always formidable organisation you started, brings you as much excitement today as it did four decades ago.
I would like to thank FLAC and in particular its current Director General, Noeline Blackwell for inviting me to give this opening address. I wish FLAC and all of its volunteers every continued success for the future which I have every confidence will see the continuation of the positive contribution to Irish society that has been FLACs hallmark since 1969.
Comhghairdeas libh arís ar an ócáid speisialta, ócáid stairiúil seo. Go n-éirí go geal libh ‘s go raibh maith agaibh go léir.