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

On the subject of juries in the coroners' courts, I am aware, from talking to people who have been in the unfortunate position of having lost family members and being involved in inquests, of inquests being delayed or not happening because the coroners could not get a jury in place. The witnesses are talking about pulling in the same people and the like. Is an inquest not even getting off the ground still happening or is there still a risk of that? That is one thing.

We have been talking a great deal about the chief coroner's office and the suggestion of looking at other models. Some more information about that would be interesting to discuss. I am curious about one thing. If we are trying to keep our coroner system as an inquisitorial system, how does that work in New Zealand, Canada and the UK, which are also adversarial common law systems? What about the juxtaposition of those different systems?

The information, the data and the like are very interesting and important, but that work cannot happen unless somebody is being paid to put it together. This gets to the need for proper secretarial support, administrative support and so forth. I am not sure compiling reports and statistical information, while important, is on that list of payments.

There is another matter I wish to flag. I do not know if it was raised previously, and my apologies if it was. We could go down a rabbit hole regarding the cost of justice to the State. We can save money and we can save lives if recommendations are followed. The problem is the recommendations are not followed. They are often just recommendations. We know in this committee what often happens to the recommendations we make. I would love to hear from the witnesses about the other jurisdictions and about making recommendations more binding, if that is possible in any way. That will obviously have impacts if we are looking at the inquisitorial approach and the lack of juries. There is a wider justice piece there. However, with regard to the piece about making recommendations stronger and more binding, how do other jurisdictions do that?

I have rambled a little, so I will summarise. It is about the other jurisdictions in terms of how they manage the inquisitorial versus adversarial aspect and the piece about making the recommendations better. I saw many people shaking their heads when I made my point about juries, so I think that has been answered.