Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The short answer is "Yes". We have allocated 24 additional new judges among the courts, and there will now be a period for the judicial planning working group to look at how the 24 additional judges and, most important, the structures and the support around them will have an impact on the overall lists. There are a number of changes to the modernisation programme and to ways in which our courts are going to operate, so it is important for that to bed down to allow us to show the benefit of the 24 additional judges. That is on top of the additional High Court judges who were allocated in the previous two years. There has been a significant increase, which has absolutely been needed, but in respect of the second half of the recommendations of the judicial planning working group, it will most likely be 2025 before there are any further new judges. The funding for 35 additional staff this year will allow that increase to bed down and I hope we start to see the benefit of that very soon. In the case of the ten additional District Court judges in particular, that court is where a lot of the backlog is for many people and those judges will, I hope, take a great deal of pressure off those who are already working.

This is just the start. It is the first phase of two and we need to allow time for these changes to bed down and for new practices to become incorporated in the overall structure. We will then go back to see how many more we can appoint as quickly as possible.