Information for Witnesses
If you consider you are likely to be approached by the Inquiry as a potential witness please read and consider this note carefully before deciding what, if any application you wish to make.
- If you consider you are likely to be approached by the Inquiry as a potential witness you will need to consider whether you wish to seek reasonable public funding in respect of legal assistance as a witness. The grant of legal funding upon application is automatic. This does not mean that the extent of legal public funding will be unlimited. It has to be restricted to what is considered reasonable in your particular circumstances. However, funding at public expense will not be means tested. The funding which would be available under this paragraph is intended to satisfy the reasonable needs required for the protection and assistance of a witness.
- If, although you consider you are likely to be approached by the Inquiry as a potential witness, you also wish to be heard as an interested party you are entitled to apply to be heard in that capacity. However, there will be no automatic grant of public funding upon such an application. Further, the grant of an application to be heard as an interested party is not the same as an application for reasonable public funding. The application is in two parts, firstly the application for interested party status and secondly, if you wish to make this additional application, for reasonable public funding to assist you as an interested party. An application for interested party status may or may not be granted. If it is granted then, unlike the case of someone who applies under paragraph 1, the grant of reasonable public funding is not automatic. It may or may not be granted and funding would, in any event, be subject to a means test. What is said in paragraph 1 about public funding would not apply to you even though you were a potential witness and even though you had been granted interested party status.
- If your application for interested party status were to be refused it would still be open to you to make application for public funding under paragraph 1. You may, if you wish, make application under both paragraphs 1 and 2 but an application under paragraph 1 will not be considered if you are granted interested party status even if you are refused public funding.
- If you believe you are likely to be approached as a potential witness you should consider carefully whether you wish to apply under paragraph 1 or wish to apply instead or also under paragraph 2 with the different conditions relating to public funding which apply to an application under paragraph 2.
- If you do not consider you are likely to be approached by the Inquiry as a potential witness the only application for you to consider would be an application under paragraph 2. What is said in that paragraph about the grant of interested party status and of public funding would apply.
