The Legal Aid Board provides legal aid and advice in civil cases to people in Ireland who meet certain requirements (mainly,their means must be below a certain limit and there must be merit in the case.
www.citizensinformation.ie
This is a useful summary of the situation with regard to civil and criminal legal aid.
That is to be expected, the law is clear in that a valid disc must be displayed. The standard process at that point is to agree a station to which you must bring the insurance certificate within 7 days. Gardai are now able to look up insurance status, so they may no longer insist on you bringing the cert in to a station, but that still doesn't cancel the offence of failure to display.