Mr. Tom Flynn:

There are a couple of views on that. There are proponents of divisionalised, specialised courts. I do not want to speak out of turn but suspect the majority of our members accept that. There is also a view that those courts are not a good idea. The Bar Council had some misgivings about the matter in the past because people feel a silo should be developed in relation to it. There are constitutional limitations. One cannot reconfigure the structure of the courts radically without a constitutional amendment. What can be achieved is a division of the court, as was done with the commercial court.

Resources are as important, if not more so, than changing the substantive procedures. If resources are significantly increased or doubled, even within the existing procedures, there will be better outcomes and quicker decision-making.

The issue of consistency is trickier. The Deputy stated the planning and environment court should only be for the more complicated cases. I can understand that argument but there is an argument that other types of environmental cases could benefit from court division. An example could be an environment division of the Circuit Court because there are highly technical matters, such as appeals against waste-facility permits, and certain types of enforcement that end up before the District Court. These are highly technical areas of law. With great respect to the average District Court judge, he or she does not know much about them and cannot be expected to. The District Court is not the optimum forum, so there may well be an argument that certain other types of cases, not necessarily in the High Court, could also benefit from a specialist division. If one were to have a debate about that, one would have to engage with the stakeholders and our organisations and really think it through.