Ms Angela Denning:

Hammond Lane has been funded to the tune of €100 million in the national development plan. This week we had our first Hammond Lane project board meeting in the Courts Service. It is a joint project with the Department of Justice on a public private partnership, PPP, basis. The Department of Justice will oversee the project. We are one element of it and An Garda Síochána is another element of it, with two Garda stations. We are ploughing on with it. I will not give a finish date because we are still at the very early stages, but we will certainly be looking to be ready for Part 9 planning early in the spring with a view to getting the building up and ready.

Senator Ruane is correct that the Children's Court will not form part of that. We did indicate as part of the national development plan that in the future we will be looking for funding to renovate and refurbish the Children's Court in Dublin. The regional family law centres are proposed in the family court Bill. We have a pilot under way in Limerick at the moment with other local NGOs, the Legal Aid Board, mediation services and so on to see what facilities would be required in a family law building. Recently, as part of our family law reform work stream, we did a very short, intensive six-week burst of consultation with various user groups as to what an ideal family court building should look like and we fed that back in to the OPW team that is working on the design of Hammond Lane at the moment.