Dr. Conor O'Mahony:

There are various approaches one could take and I will suggest what is probably the cleanest and quickest way to deal with the situation. At present different aspects of family law are allocated to different courts. Mr. Walsh alluded to that earlier. Some decisions are made in the District Court, some in the Circuit Court and some in the High Court. What could very easily be done is what happens in other areas, for example, in the Children Court for criminal matters involving children. For those family cases one would designate the courts when they are hearing those issues as the family District Court, the family Circuit Court or the family High Court. The legislation would then set out what are the characteristics of the family District Court to differentiate it from the regular District Court, be that procedural, in terms of facilities or specialist training for judges or other staff members. In that way, one would slot it into what we already have but one would then separate it out in terms of that level of specialisation around the staffing and facilities that make it a specialist court.