Mr. Mark Toland:

There is a great deal of work that can be done to speed up a case from the minute a crime takes place to get it into the criminal justice system, if that is the right avenue for a particular crime. One of the things that is being done in the Circuit Court on the more serious offences is to have pre-trial hearings where parties are brought together a month before the trial date to ensure that the case is ready to go. Have witnesses been warned, summonses been served, and all information disclosed so that when the parties come to court on the first day of trial everything is ready to go? It is something that could be rolled out to the District Court - it is used in other jurisdictions - to ensure that cases are trial-ready.

So much time is wasted. Professional witnesses are brought in and people who have given up a day of work attend to find that a case does not go ahead because a document or a witness has not been served. If I was a witness, I would be frustrated that I had come to court. It is not effective. People should have to come to court on the day to give evidence and be released. Many trials take place with video evidence, particularly where doctors have to give medical evidence which they can do via video link from their hospitals. We recommend in our report that technology could reduce much of the time professional witnesses, people who live a long distance away or a garda who works in Kerry and must come to Dublin would have to spend in court. That could be done through a video conference so that they are lost to policing or other work for an hour or two rather than a day or a day and a half.