Legal Aid for Applicants
HIA Inquiry · Report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry · Issued 20 January 2017 · Addressed to: Northern Ireland Executive
Source — verbatim from the inquiry
●Inquiry recommendation
We recommend that applicants should be eligible for legal aid to allow them to obtain legal assistance to make an application for an award.
HIA Inquiry, Report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry · 20 Jan 2017 Source PDF →
Published evidence summary
Publicly available evidence relating to this recommendation:
- Applicants have been able to access legal assistance to make applications to the Redress Board since it opened in March 2020 (HIA Redress Board).
Response — verbatim from government
●Northern Ireland Executive
No formal government response published.
Northern Ireland Executive · 5 Nov 2019 Written response →
Evidence trail — what's actually happened since
- 5 Nov 2019 Legal aid eligibility for applicants seeking compensation was established by the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Act 2019, allowing individuals to obtain legal assistance to make an application for an award. Source →
Each entry above links to a primary source — gov.uk written statement, consultation response document, or inspection report. The Index does not characterise government intent; it tracks what has been published.
How this page is built
Source and Response are verbatim from primary documents. The Evidence trail records published activity since — written statements, consultation outcomes, inspection findings, parliamentary references. The Index does not paraphrase or characterise intent; it tracks what has been published. Where the evidence is the absence of action (a missed deadline, a slipped timetable), that absence is documented from primary sources rather than inferred.
This recommendation's data is verified periodically against primary sources. The Index is monitored for staleness weekly.