Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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Following on from what the Chairman said about regional courthouses in general, there is a concern among practitioners around the country that court sittings are being moved to regional centres such as Limerick from Ennis and other places in Clare and Kerry. Criminal hearings and sentencing hearings are being moved to Limerick. The result is that gardaí must leave the county. They are away all day and perhaps for longer than that. Another difficulty is that complainants and their families along with the families of accused people must also move outside the county. Justice should be seen to be done in the local area as much as possible. While Covid restrictions are in place, we have an opportunity to improve courthouses. For example, there is no video link facility in the courthouse in Tralee and no space has been rented in that area for remote jury selection.

There is a wider issue relating to Tralee courthouse, which the Minister may have heard me mention before. This is the time to refurbish the existing site on Ashe Street. There is ample space there for redevelopment and the Covid restrictions provide us with the opportunity. Some of the concerns that the Courts Service may have had about the existing building might not constitute such an issue after all. For example, victims of crime and domestic violence cases do not necessarily have to be within the court building and have separate rooms. The Department is renting office space a couple of hundred yards up the road and I understand that hundreds of thousands of euro is being spent annually when there is space upstairs in the existing building that could be utilised. As regard the family law courts, in which Tralee may or may not be included, there is a building across the road that could be used as a family law court to keep it separate but more or less, make a complex out of it. I hope the Minister is fairly well versed in most pros and some of the cons relating to keeping it there. I suggest that now is the time when things are in a state of flux to act and refurbish the existing courthouse, which would benefit the town and county by keeping and securing the future of court services in the town.