HIA-11 Response Accepted

Legal Aid for Applicants

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.

Published Evidence Summary
The following publicly available evidence relates to this recommendation:
- Legal aid eligibility for applicants seeking compensation was established by the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Act 2019 (Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Act 2019).
- Applicants have been able to access legal assistance to make applications to the Redress Board since it opened in March 2020 (HIA Redress Board).
How was this evidence gathered?
Evidence searched by Claude (Anthropic) on 10 Apr 2026
Checked data held on this site (government responses, progress updates, independent evidence)
Jurisdiction
Northern Ireland
Response
Accepted
Accepted Northern Ireland Executive
05 Nov 2019

No formal government response published.

Read Full Response
Progress Timeline
Official Report
05 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
Report Report of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry 20 Jan 2017
Responsible Bodies
Northern Ireland Executive Primary
Recommendation age 9.4 yrs
Last formal update 2399 days ago