Dr. Conor O'Mahony:

I think the necessity for new buildings varies from place to place. Some court buildings throughout the country are in fairly good shape and with some slight modifications, they could accommodate this service, but there are many that would not. Certainly at District Court level, there are many very small Victorian style District Court buildings which are utterly unsuitable. Reference has been made to the courthouse on Chancery Street in Dublin which is almost the last place where child protection cases should be heard. It has razor wire on the top of the walls and bars on the windows of the consultation rooms and so on. We could absolutely use other buildings. In some ways, for this type of case, the less it looks like a traditional courthouse the better. It would not be necessary to build shiny specialised court buildings in every town in Ireland. There is a lot that could be done in using creatively other accommodation and then regional centres in having dedicated buildings.