Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I hope my sound is working because I want to get up on my soapbox again to endorse what Deputy Daly said about the number of judges and the capacity of the system. Yes, there has been a backlog arising from Covid but there is also a problem with the number of judges. There is a problem with investment in access to justice both through civil legal aid and criminal legal aid, but also in the area of judges. We appointed five additional judges, which was very welcome, but it must be put against the context of the President of the High Court saying she needs 17 extra judges. That is just the High Court. That does not include the District and Circuit Courts. If we are appointing more judges in the District and Circuit Courts, they need to be free to move around and not tied to one district or circuit so they can be mobile and able to address the demand and waiting lists as they appear. We absolutely need more judges. We have 3.3 judges per 100,000 people compared with 21 judges per 100,000 in most European countries. In rankings by international bodies that review the efficiency of justice systems, Ireland comes fairly low.

The point I wanted to make originally overlaps to a degree with the Estimates in subhead B10 for the Coroners Court. There is an underspend of about €5 million. I would like to hear more about that. What caused it and what are the problems behind it? I asked a question about the coroner system during Questions on Promised Legislation. There is a report from 2000 which recommended radical reform. Research by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, shows this has not happened and the coroner system is under-resourced and regionally disjointed. Deputies Gould and Ó Laoghaire have been talking a lot about the challenges around the Coroners Court in Cork. I am sure these problems are repeated everywhere.

In its pre-budget submission, the ICCL asked for a paltry amount of approximately €300,000 towards taking the first step in a radical reform of and improvement of the coroner system. If we have such a large underspend, we should be using at least some of it to deliver those reforms that have been advocated for by the ICCL. I would like some information on how the underspend came about.