Ms Angela Denning:

The age of the buildings is a real challenge for us. It is not just people in the criminal system who have disabilities.

The civil system is where people, after road traffic accidents, catastrophic injuries at birth and so on, all come to the Four Courts or one of our bigger buildings around the country to seek justice. We have the judicial review list, where people with disabilities in particular are frequently litigating to access rights. It is a challenge for us right across the spectrum. It is largely dependent on funding and the capacity on our side and that of the OPW to do the work. Given the current rate of building inflation, it is not a good time to be doing a lot of work on courthouses, but as that changes we might get better value for money. The challenge is working through the courthouses one by one, and we are trying to do it in a planned way. The report I spoke about earlier is an internal audit report. I asked our internal auditor to look at our compliance with disability legislation right across the board. I have the draft report. It first has to go for management observation and then, in accordance with our governance structure, it goes to the audit and risk committee of the Courts Service board, which will make its recommendations. We have a recommendation tracker, which means an eye is kept on the recommendations and we report back to the audit and risk committee as the delivery of each of the recommendation is worked through. It is a pretty robust system.