Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am keen to ensure the processing of the Judicial Council Bill. It is currently before the House. In the Estimates, there is a token allocation which will allow for the establishment of the subhead. This is an issue with which the committee can be of assistance and ensure we make progress on it later in the year.

As for the matter of the digital audio recording programme, the first phase of it went live in Dublin in the Four Courts and in the Criminal Courts of Justice in January of last year. The national roll-out will conclude during the summer of this year, following which a total of 254 courtrooms will have their digital audio recording facilities refreshed. The court building programme, the most elaborate and most expensive courts programme in history of the State, is now coming on stream with the recent opening of courthouses in Waterford, Drogheda, Letterkenny and the soon-to-be-opened courthouses which were extensively refurbished in Cork and Mullingar. These are state-of-the-art courthouses. If the committee has not already done so, I suggest it might pay a visit to one of these regional court centres which have the type of equipment which modern society requires such as victim support rooms, vulnerable witness rooms, children's rooms and, obviously, jury rooms. For many years, there was the wholly unsatisfactory scenario of having litigants on both sides and having vulnerable witnesses, often times, sharing court space with perpetrators of crimes. Over the past several years, we have ensured that we are tackling this issue, accepting there is a further programme of work to be undertaken but moving towards a modern courts infrastructure which will serve the needs of our community far better than was the case in the past.