A spokesperson for the board said it redacted accounts that weren’t “evidence-based” and had not tried to “hide or trivialise the scale of any crisis”.
In mid-2025, Anne McShane – then a lawyer at the Legal Aid Board’s Cork North asylum law centre – found herself struggling to navigate a tower of cases, she said recently.
“I was having panic attacks and I couldn’t sleep,” said McShane by phone, on Thursday.
McShane was struggling because at the time she and one other solicitor were the only ones in the office handling asylum cases. Another lawyer had just left. McShane was part-time.
More importantly, the clients – people seeking asylum – were paying the price, struggling to access timely legal advice, McShane said.
“I had contacted a few people looking for help, and I was told that, you know, she was the person,” said McShane.
The person to take it up with, McShane said, was Emily Sherlock, the board’s director of internal service delivery for civil legal aid.
That’s how an email from McShane to Sherlock, sent on 26 May 2025, came about, McShane said.
In writing it, McShane said she hoped to support her boss, Patrice Cooney, so she felt less alone in conveying concerns to the higher-ups at the board.
Her email was in a crop of documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Some parts of it were redacted. But a technical fail made it easy to reveal what sat behind the black rectangles – not just in her email but also in other documents.
That included on-the-ground accounts of the staffing crunch at the Cork North office and a rebuke of the Minister for Justice’s asylum policy laid out in McShane’s email.
If the board wasn’t going to hire more lawyers, “We will not be able to provide a professional service, and our health will suffer. Quite honestly I feel unwell today just thinking about it,” McShane had written.
Those words were redacted in the email that was released.
Where she had written that “the policy of the Minister is to speed up and deport as many applicants as possible”, that was also hidden behind a black rectangle.
Lines saying the department had padded up staff numbers for its International Protection Office to process cases faster and reject them, “often on spurious” grounds, weren’t redacted – except for the word “spurious”– but the lines after that were.
“We are continually running to catch up. It is so important for us to provide good advice and advocacy in this challenging environment. In these circumstances we need another [international protection] solicitor,” the redacted lines read.
In hiding words like that, the Legal Aid Board relied on Section 29 (1) of the FOI Act.
That’s about keeping deliberations of public bodies confidential, subject to a public-interest test. In particular, it had invoked “Section 29 (1) b”, which says releasing the information “would be contrary to the public interest”.
A spokesperson for the Legal Aid Board said its FOI unit redacted accounts that weren’t “evidence-based” and “to release such information to the public could likely be misperceived as factually correct”.
Fred Logue, solicitor and managing partner at the law firm FP Logue LLP – who specialises in information law – said that argument wouldn’t carry much weight before the Information Commissioner.
It “regularly dismisses arguments based on claims the public might misunderstand or misinterpret the information”, he said.
I hope you don't mind me writing to you directly. I really feel I need to write to express my concern about our staffing situation in this office.
With [Person's Name] gone, we have just one full time and one part time solicitor doing International Protection. I understand that there may be a replacement for [Person's Name] to begin work in January 2026.
This is unsustainable. Even with all new work pp'd out to private practitioners, we have a very active existing caseload, and now [Person's Name]'s files as well. With the summer coming up, there will be times when there is no IP solicitor in the office, or just one of us.
I am already working late in the evenings to make sure Submissions are lodged and Appeals are submitted.
One and a half solicitors absolutely cannot be left to deal with all the IP work for the next seven months. We will not be able to provide a professional service, and our health will suffer. Quite honestly I feel unwell today just thinking about it.
I have asked if we can have a locum to cover the seven months. I really think that this is the least that can be done.
You will know how difficult it is in IP work just now. We do not get clients' files before interviews, decisions are generally negative, often on spurious grounds. The policy of the Minister is to speed up and deport as many applicants as possible. There has been a massive increase of staff in the IPO office. We are continually running to catch up. It is so important for us to provide good advice and advocacy in this challenging environment.
In these circumstances we need another IP solicitor.
Trust and transparency
It’s well understood that people voice their views and assessments when deliberating on a matter, said Logue. “In fact that is the very nature of deliberation.”
It’s common for government bodies that fall under the FOI Act to turn to Section 29 (1) to justify redactions, he said, because they are always deliberating about something as they see it. “So it’s an easy one to engage.”
If the body declines to release something, and the requester disagrees with that, then they can appeal that decision for an internal review. That’s when a more experienced staff member in the same department looks at the decision.
If the requester disagrees with the outcome of the internal review, they can then appeal to the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC).
A spokesperson for the OIC said, speaking generally, it believes that the FOI Act promotes transparency and public awareness.
FOI bodies are “fully aware” that its position is that openness must be enhanced, the spokesperson said.
Appealing to the OIC generally costs €50 and wait times for the assignment of cases and decisions are lengthy. Sometimes, it takes multiple back-and-forths.
Mairéad Farrell, a Sinn Féin TD, who’s been pushing for the reform of the FOI Act at the Dáil, said in an email that appeals are expensive and won’t be refunded even if you’re successful – and that’s unfair.
Her proposed legislation aims to make those fees refundable if an appeal succeeds, Farrell said. “If we want faith in the public system we need to have transparency.”
Asked about the redactions, the spokesperson for the Legal Aid Board said it would like to “reiterate that all the Legal Aid Board's FOI Requests are processed fairly” and in step with the law.
It had not tried to “hide or trivialise the scale of any crisis or other matter identified from the records”, they said.
In the released documents, someone at the board had redacted the word “crisis” itself, though.
In June 2025, McShane, the ex asylum lawyer at its Cork North law centre, went on sick leave, she said. “I went to see my doctor, and she just said, ‘Look, you can’t carry on like that.”
She never returned, McShane said. Soon after, the other lawyer, the full-time one, also departed, documents show.
At that point in the summer of 2025, Cooney – McShane’s boss – was scrambling to keep the lights on, dealing both with the staffing crunch and an out-of-order phone line that remained dead for several months, documents suggest.
She wrote to Sherlock that she was short of both lawyers and clerical officers, and it was having a “huge” impact on the operation of the law centre. The word huge was redacted.
Cooney described the situation as an "unprecedented crisis”, which was also redacted.
At another point in the summer, she wrote: “ I feel this Law Centre is in unprecedented situation of crisis (based on my 26 years working here) and the Legal Aid Board needs to be on notice of my concerns in this regard”.
The reference to the crisis and the basis for Cooney's assessment were both redacted.
A couple of months later, in October 2025, the office was still short of both lawyers and clerical officers, documents suggest.
Cooney wrote to Sherlock that “I am gone past the end of my tether” – which was redacted – in relation to trying to juggle to keep this Law Centre functioning as a Government Office providing a Professional service to the public”.
At another point in October, she wrote that “Loosing 5 staff in nearly as many weeks is naturally having a detrimental effect on office morale”. “Detrimental effect” was redacted.
Sherlock was in talks with HR to fill the vacant roles, documents suggest.
And by November, the office was getting new clerical officers. One solicitor was set to return to work by February 2026, documents suggest.
[Person's Name] was speaking to HR this morning and they advise that there is no update on the potential CO with the reasonable accommodation request.
She was also advised that there was no process in place in relation to other CO vacancies at present.
We continue to be short 3 COs and 3 Solicitors which is having a huge impact on the operation of the law centre and staff morale and wellbeing.
I had yet another client contact me on my mobile this morning having tried on several occasions to phone the Law Centre Landline. Again staff have no indication when there may be an operational phone system in the Law Centre and the situation is now ongoing for 3 months.
I will continue to steer the Law Centre through this unprecedented crisis but it is becoming increasingly challenging particularly as we face into the forthcoming Legal Term without the necessary supports in place to allow us provide our clients with a service.
Meanwhile, the most salient cost of all was the impact on the lives of people seeking asylum who relied on the service in Cork city.
By the end of July 2025, Cooney wrote to Sherlock that there are 500 unassigned asylum cases “with deadlines etc.”.
She’s hoping to assign them to private practitioners , she wrote. “but this cannot happen with current PP availability at a fast enough pace to meet the demand”.
She voiced worries about a “potential negligence action” against the board.
In late November, the office’s phone line was still out of order, too, Cooney wrote. A client had apparently said they would report the law centre to Micheál Martin, the Cork South-Central Fianna Fáil TD and current Taoiseach, she wrote.
“I sincerely hope she has done so as he may have some influence on the situation,” wrote Cooney. That was redacted.
At one point, a client put in a complaint saying their lawyer had left the job, and they never got assigned a new one.
“This is indeed the case,” Cooney wrote.
But “the decision not to replace his Solicitor was not made by me so I am not in a position to answer his query/complaint”, she wrote.
In the end, the board’s Cork North asylum law centre wasn’t going to have as many lawyers as it once had, documents suggest.
In February, there were two lawyer vacancies there, and one person “possibly” returning to fill one of them, documents show.
Sherlock wrote that there was an ongoing recruitment process for asylum lawyers in Dublin as the board sketches out a plan for offering legal advice in a novel fast-paced scheme under the EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact.
Ireland has opted into the pact, which is set to activate in June 2026. Among other things, it speeds up the process for most people seeking protection.
About the two existing asylum lawyer roles in Cork North, Sherlock wrote, “We urgently need solicitors in Dublin for the Pact work, that these posts would be repurposed for Dublin,” in an email dated 13 February.
But the spokesperson for the Legal Aid Board said that, “No recommendations or decisions have been made regarding the reassignment of solicitor vacancies in Cork to any other area”.
It continues to accept legal aid applications in that office from people seeking asylum who need advice, they said.
McShane, the solicitor who left the Cork North office last summer, said she stands by every word in her email to Sherlock. “I just felt horrible for my clients.”
She thought she was doing her bit to help by emailing the line manager, she said.
It was surreal to see the email again – which she hadn’t kept a copy of – with all its redactions, McShane said.
The Legal Aid Board has increasingly leaned on its private solicitors panel – who have comoplained about low wages for years – to offer legal advice as it struggles to keep up with the pace at which some asylum cases are processed.
Shamim Malekmian
In a July email to Sherlock, Cooney wrote that, “I now have 3 Solicitor caseloads without an assigned Solicitor. I am therefore taking steps to re-assign ALL CURRENT cases to the Private Practitioner Panel.”
“I am doing this in the interest of client care and also risk management where as Managing Solicitor I can no longer stand over the level of service to these clients,” Cooney wrote.
Since late November 2022, the Department of Justice has been redirecting cases from citizens of countries classified as “safe” and, later, from countries with the highest number of applications, to an express route.
The asylum process is due to pick up pace for even more people under the pact.
McShane said they still had lots of cases internally, despite overreliance on the board’s private lawyers panel.
The Legal Aid Board has three law centres dealing with asylum cases in Dublin, Cork, and Galway, according to its 2024 annual report, the most recent one available on its website.
The number of asylum legal aid applications has soared from 1,174 in 2020 to 11,689 in 2024, said the report.
Some people seeking asylum whose cases were processed quickly have said in the past that they struggle to access early legal advice and show up for interviews unprepared and get rejected.
In this kind of scenario, the number of appeals also balloons, according to a policy brief from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, probing fairness in fast-tracked asylum systems.
It takes much more time to build a strong defence for someone who is from a country considered “safe”, McShane said.
“You have to work really hard to reverse that assumption,” she said. Otherwise, a rejection is “almost automatic”, said McShane.
And when you dedicate enough time to a case, it makes a world of difference, she said, bringing positive decisions for clients.
“I am already working late in the evenings to make sure Submissions are lodged and Appeals are submitted,” wrote McShane in her email to Sherlock.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said it doesn’t have any comments in response to criticism of the Minister for Justice’s asylum policy laid out in McShane’s email.
It’s working closely with the Legal Aid Board to make its “important work” possible, including delivery of asylum legal advice.
“Funding to the Board has increased by 37% to €73 million since 2023,” they said.
Despite the pressure that in the end made her unravel, McShane said she misses her job.
“I loved my job, though. I really loved it. I was very very upset to have to leave it,” she said.
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