Mr. Seán Ó hUallacháin:

The Bar Council is very much in favour of alternative dispute resolution. It must be borne in mind that alternative dispute resolution is not solely limited to mediation. There is collaborative law which is not developing to any great extent at the moment and there can possibly be arbitration. On that, the Bar Council is engaged in a pilot analysis with the Law Society and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators to see if there are certain aspects of family law involving discrete issues which, without impeding on any constitutional boundaries, could be arbitrated to reduce costs and shorten cases. That is in its early stages. We have a dispute resolution centre at our premises in the Distillery Building on Church Street. While it is mainly used at the moment by inquiries and commercial groups, it is there. We spent money to fit it out and people can use it for mediation or arbitration in family law or any other area. We are very open to that. However, we are acutely conscious, with no disrespect to Dr. O'Shea who is an admirable person, that mediation is not a panacea. This is a wide panoply of cases and the numbers are big. There are a lot of family law cases where the parties will not be willing to engage in mediation. One can try and one can introduce them to it, but mediation by definition requires two consenting parties. Without that, mediation becomes another layer with an additional cost and a delay factor before one moves to the courts system or arbitration. At least with arbitration and the courts system, there are defined processes. In court, the judge can call the shots as may the arbitrator in an arbitration, albeit I accept that is limited in family law cases. While mediation certainly has a role and probably a greater one than it currently plays-----