Dr. David Kenny:

I fully agree with all the concerns raised by my colleagues but there is one point I would add. We will eventually have to give more careful consideration to the requirement for public access to justice, that is, the need for justice to be administered in public and for the public to see justice being done. It will be important for any system of remote hearings to provide for that need in an ongoing way. We must also consider that making court hearings available online, and therefore much more accessible, raises privacy concerns. I refer to the details of people's lives that can be aired in a court hearing. For that information to be heard by a few people who choose to come to court to hear it is quite different from making it available online on a lasting basis. We will have to consider those concerns if we wish to move permanently to online hearings.