Mr. Justice Michael Reilly:

When I examined this issue in 2006 and 2007 when I chaired the committee, I knew very little about the practicalities of community courts. The one point that came across forcibly was that community courts can work only in communities. First, the communities must be asked what the issues are that annoy them. In Southill in Limerick, for example, there might be a very different annoying matter than in inner-city Dublin. In inner-city Dublin, one would have to canvass the views of the community, which comprises a large body of people. I refer not only to the indigenous community but also to the business community and everybody else. One must determine the low-level offences. An offence might be shoplifting in one place, prostitution in another and low-level drug dealing somewhere else. While there are models all over the world, each community court would be adapted to provide for the needs of its community.

The next thing one has to have is the community court. I agree absolutely with the two lawyers that the community court is a sort of one-stop shop. Consider what would occur if I overindulged my son and he had too much money and got into trouble some night owing to having too much drink, for example. Let us assume he has no underlying problems to deal with and has a good job. He would plead guilty during the community court proceedings and his case would be dealt with on the day. He would probably be doing community service the next day. The response would be proportionate and his service would be in the area in which he would have been annoying people.

Where a person has underlying problems, one must find out what they are. Rather than giving the person a letter to go to the social welfare office or elsewhere, it is a question of having staff who can take a statement or history from the offender and evaluate and assess the underlying problems. This can be done in the area in question. I agree with what Mr. Ken Murphy said in this regard. Alongside the arrangement I have just described, one must have facilities to help the offender. There is no point in assessing a person as having a chronic drug problem and telling him he will have to go into rehabilitation on receiving a letter stating he has been accommodated because he will probably have changed house four or five times before the letter arrives, if it ever arrives. There should be instantaneous help for such people.

I was asked how many courts there should be in Dublin. I would have believed the best approach would be to have a pilot project and evaluate how it works. One would learn from the pilot arrangement. One would learn from the failures in places such as Liverpool. One learns from failures in addition to successes. To have this conversation, one has to have all the main players on board. It is good to see all the people around this table singing from the same hymn sheet, albeit with different concerns. One must examine the feasibility first and then the practicalities of setting up the model. There is no point in trying to set up a community court while sitting in Leinster House, the Department of Justice and Equality or the Law Society as one must take account of what is on the ground and know one will have the required services. If the services are available, one is on the right kind of road.

With regard to the crime threshold, the committee I chaired that brought out the report in 2007 went to great lengths to identify levels of crime and the type of crime in a geographic area of Dublin that could be considered as one that could be dealt with in community courts. The list is not exhaustive but an indication of the types of crimes. The types of crimes might change from year to year. If one got rid of shoplifting – one probably never would – there would not be much point continuing to have it listed. One could take on something else that might have become a serious matter for the community.

There is no real top threshold. Clearly one cannot have people who commit violent crime in the community court; it would not be appropriate to have them there. One could have a changing system whereby a community court in one part of Dublin would have a specific remit and another court in another part of Dublin dealing with another type of crime.