EXCLUSIVE

STATE PAY 

Cocaine rap solicitor bags over €1.6m in legal aid and named one of top ten earners after escaping criminal conviction

• Published: 13:00, 8 May 2023
• Updated: 13:14, 8 May 2023

COCAINE rap solicitor Aonghus McCarthy has bagged over €1.6million in legal aid in three years.

New figures reveal legal eagle McCarthy’s bumper earnings after he escaped a criminal conviction despite coke being found in his wallet while on a professional visit to a jail.

The Irish Sun revealed how the lawyer, who told the court someone else put the drugs in his wallet at a bash, celebrated having his case for possession of cocaine struck out in 2018 by hitting the town.

Now it has emerged McCarthy has been named as one of the top ten earning solicitors involved with the criminal legal aid scheme in each of the last three years.

In total, he received €1,607,671.23 between 2020 and 2022.

McCarthy was paid €414,203.85 for criminal legal aid work in 2020, while he received an additional €591,304.65 in 2021. Last year the solicitor got a whopping €602,162.73 in legal aid fees.

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The lawyer was listed the sixth top-earning legal aid solicitor in 2020, before reaching third place in 2021 and fourth place in 2022.

The figures emerged in the answer to a parliamentary question put to Justice Minister Simon Harris by Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.

Ms Murphy, the co-founder of the Social Democrats, asked the Minister to provide a breakdown of the amount of criminal legal aid that has been paid out to solicitors.

The party’s spokesperson on Justice also requested the amount paid to each of the top ten recipients in fees in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The figures showed fees paid to solicitors for criminal legal aid work totalled €34,217,662 for 2020, €40,280,587 for 2021 and €41,474,735.

This year €10,737,053 has been paid out on legal aid to solicitors — up to the end of March.

Harris told how his Department had no role in the granting of legal aid, but was instead responsible for the payment of fees.

The Justice Minister said: “I can inform the Deputy that Criminal legal services are provided by private solicitors who have notified the relevant Court of their availability to undertake criminal legal aid work.

“The courts, through the judiciary, are responsible for the granting of legal aid on application by the defence in court. My Department has no role in the granting of legal aid or in the appointment of solicitors.”

MASSIVE FEES

Free legal aid must be granted, in certain circumstances, for the defence of persons of insufficient means in criminal proceedings.

McCarthy’s earnings on the criminal legal aid payment scheme have soared since the cocaine controversy.

Before the coke rap, McCarthy received €343,893 in fees in 2016 — just over half the amount he bagged last year.

McCarthy was granted a reprieve by a judge in 2018 after coke was found in his wallet while on a professional visit to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

McCarthy, who is from Co Cork but whose practice is at Conyngham Road, Dublin 8, was originally charged with conveying a controlled drug into Mountjoy Prison or to a person in the jail, on February 8, 2017, a charge he denied.

An additional but less serious charge of unlawful possession of the drug was then brought.

The court heard that McCarthy had visited the jail in a professional capacity at 6.30pm on February 8, 2017.

A plastic packet containing a white substance was recovered after a prison officer saw a black patch in his wallet when his possessions were scanned by an X-ray machine.

‘NOBLE PROFESSION’

Garda Sgt Zita Woods told Dublin District Court that McCarthy had accepted the cocaine, worth €26 and weighing 0.33grams, was found in his wallet but he had no idea how it got there.

McCarthy’s solicitor had pleaded with the court to note it was a very small amount of drugs and he had a good future.

Judge Jones told McCarthy he would be spared a criminal conviction for the offence if he made a donation to the Merchants Quay drug project.

The judge said McCarthy was in a “noble profession”.

And after McCarthy donated €1,250 to the drug addiction treatment centre, the lawyer was granted a strikeout when the case resumed before another judge, Grainne O’Neill.

Our photos showed the relieved lawyer lapping up a trance classics night at a pub in the capital just four days after the case was struck out.