Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In July last the Government approved the Minister's proposals to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution to provide that the Oireachtas may establish additional courts, including superior courts. As the Deputy will be aware, the present position is that Article 34 of the Constitution provides that the High Court is a court of first instance and the Supreme Court is the court of final appeal. The Constitution further provides that courts of local and limited jurisdiction may be provided by law. There is no provision for the establishment of other courts.

The proposed amendment would, if passed, allow for the establishment of modern court structures including a court of civil appeal and a new family court structure. This follows from the report of the working group on a court of appeal, which reported in 2009, and a commitment in the agreed programme for Government to establish separate family courts. There is, as the Deputy may be aware, an urgent need to address significant delays in the Supreme Court list and in other areas, such as family law. In future, other areas may arise such as, for example, a European patent court or an environment court. Specialist courts and judges combined with an additional court at appellate level would assist with the State's obligations under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to have legal proceedings determined within a reasonable time.

These proposals have the potential to achieve significant change to the structure of the courts, which have remained largely unchanged since 1924. Considerable work will be necessary to develop these proposals and this already has commenced in the Department. A decision on the timing of the necessary referendum will be made at a later date. As a next step, the Minister intends to engage in a public consultation process on the proposed reforms to foster a wide-ranging debate and I understand that submissions will be invited in the near future.

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