Ms Karen Kiernan:

I sit on the board of the Courts Service and I am aware it is very committed to family law reform and the development of state-of-the-art services in family law courts. That is good. There are significant delays and challenges. If the family court Bill delivers what has been signalled it will, specialist judges will be enrolled and they will be supported. That should mean fewer delays. We in One Family are aware from our work of cases where reports done for children have gone out of date because it has taken so long to get assessment and a court date, and then they have had to go again. Those parents are paying significant amounts of money, €7,000 or more, for those reports. The courts own them rather than the parents. There is a lot of waste. There is not a system really, to be quite honest, so we need to build a system. Even in respect of child maintenance, there is no system. The Chairman's question is pertinent and relevant to the lived reality of many thousands of families in Ireland. There are numerous answers and not only one. We hope that will be a part of the reform the new Bill will deliver.