Ms Angela Denning:

The entire modernisation programme is about improving access to justice for people. The opening statement was geared at the questions I have been asked to respond to by way of submission earlier in the year. At the early stages of the modernisation programme, we prioritised what I call ordinary users of the Courts Service. This week, for example, we launched our just-a-minute, JAM, card initiative jointly with the Probation Service, the Department of Justice, the Dublin Coroners Court and the Prison Service. People who have a learning difficulty or something like that can show their card. Some 75% of our staff have trained in recent weeks on this initiative to help people who might be a little daunted by coming to court.

In our budget submission, I asked for a dedicated person for our website to work on plain English. We have done a lot of work on our website in the past year. We have 3 million hits on the website every year and it is a difficult choice because a lot of legal practitioners use it every day and they are looking for specific legal information. We also have a large number of ordinary members of the public or people who might be summoned to court for something, and if it is their first time going to court, plain English is very important for them. That is something we intend to look at next year.

We recently did a proof of concept in one of the buildings here in Dublin, and if it is successful, we will roll it out in other locations. We went around and filmed the premises and there are points where people can tap a mobile phone on entering and it tells them where to go next. Another option is to do a visit of the courthouse beforehand with little videos showing what the judge does, what the registrar does and so on. That can help to make it a little less daunting for people who are coming to court for the first time. If we expand it further, it will be possible for people to see the courtroom they will be in on a particular day, which might help people orientate themselves a bit.

The use of remote courts does help some people. In the Far East, they say remote is a leveller. Nobody is dressed up in a particular way and all you can see are people's heads on a screen, which levels the playing ground somewhat for people. Our vision up to 2030 is all about ordinary court users, and if we keep them at the centre of everything, then all the other parts of the jigsaw puzzle should fit into place very well.

Justice is also blind. One of the ladies on the top of the Four Courts has a blindfold. We do not distinguish between different types of court users in terms of gender, race or anything like that. Everybody is treated equally, as they should be. That is the way our strategy for the next ten years is geared: that we treat everybody equally, but that we try to improve everything for everybody.