Mr. Seán Ó hUallacháin:

In response to Senator Black, it is not entirely depressing nor are we in the Dark Ages. There are aspects of the system - I use the word "system" as the Chairman has said - but it is a vast system covering the whole country and covering all ranges of people's lives. That is what makes the family system somewhat different, perhaps even from the criminal system. One gets involved in every aspect of the person's life, not only the child-related issues but also the person's financial, company law, pension and housing issues. As was said earlier, a holistic approach is required.

There are problems but they are mainly down to resources because the system operates on close to a shoestring. I appreciate we had a bad recession ten years ago but I would have thought that at this stage we could consider investing more money in it.

We all seem to agree specialist judges with specialist training are needed. It is the one need that seems to be agreed. However, one need not necessarily spend all one's money on a new panoply of courts, judges and registrars. One needs the personnel but one has an existing structure which works quite well. In terms of the District Court, it has its rules. The Circuit Court has its rules. The reason we have a High Court is that it will define the law. Life is dynamic. The family law system is no different. One will not be able to write the rule book for all occasions. It is good to write the rule book but one must have cases going up to a High Court or even beyond so that it can state what happens in this area. For example, the Oireachtas passed legislation in 2010 governing civil partnership and cohabitation.

The problem with the cohabitation legislation - and if Ms Nuala Jackson was allowed to speak she would agree - is that there has been no analysis by the higher courts of what is to be done and how one applies the sections of that Act in deciding what type of compensatory maintenance or property adjustment order should be made if the court finds there is cohabitation and a financial dependency. That is a problem for the Circuit Court and for practitioners. While most cases might happen at lower court level, one needs the higher courts to set the law, and the structure historically works. Otherwise, all the District Courts and Circuit Courts will come at it differently. We have that structure. It is not so much a case of if something is not broken one does not fix it as that one does not necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. I am not saying that a tweak is required. It requires substantial resources and it is necessary to write new rules and train people. However, it can be done with resources within the existing structure.

In fairness to the personnel of the Courts Service and judges at all levels, most of them work very hard to provide some service. It is difficult with the burden that is placed on them. That is particularly true of judges and civil servants in the District Court. The burden placed on them is enormous and, with no disrespect to the Oireachtas, the Oireachtas keeps giving them more functions. If one is going to give people more functions, one has to provide more resources.

With regard to mediation, we all agree that we need to weed out bad mediators. At last we have a Mediation Act. As Dr. O'Shea said, there is now movement towards the establishment of the mediation council, which will produce codes of conduct for mediators. That will go some way towards resolving that issue.