David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When I first glanced through this Bill, I noted it amended nine different Acts, which brings to attention the need to consolidate previous Acts and our whole body of law. People who work in this area have told me it is extremely time-consuming and costly for solicitors and barristers to have to go through all the existing Acts when working on a case. I understand the Law Reform Commission is working to try to bring about consolidation. We need to look seriously at doing that because it costs significant money for businesses, families and others to make sense of our corpus of law.

I commend the Minister on his introduction of this Bill. We are very lucky to have this Minister, who is an expert in this area. I am not an expert and there is nobody else in the House who is as expert as he is. When I look at this area, I realise how complicated it is and how little I know about it. In order to try to educate myself a little in this area, I attended a seminar last Saturday organised by the Department in Dublin. Again, I congratulate the Minister on that seminar, which was a consultative seminar on the possible establishment of a separate family court structure. It was very well attended, was extremely interesting and there were a number of eminent speakers, including Mr. Justice Michael White from the High Court, Mrs. Justice Judith Ryan from the Family Court of Australia, Gerard Durcan SC, Muriel Walls, solicitor, Bronagh O'Hanlon SC and representatives of the Family Lawyers' Association of Ireland. I found it fascinating to listen to what these people had to say on this issue and the Minister and the large number of eminent people who attended also listened attentively to the contributions. It struck me that it would be very helpful if we had a similar seminar here and if it was compulsory for Members to attend, because then Members could come in here and speak sensibly on this area. As Members are aware, family law cases are held in camera. I have never attended such a case, but the Minister has attended many. I wonder how many Members know enough about this area to speak on it with any form of authority, experience or credibility.

I would like to mention some comments from Saturday's seminar. One speaker spoke about assessing the current system and said that clients had told her it was unremittingly crushing and awful; was chaotic and dysfunctional; was like a form of torture; had no coherence or consistency; was an utter terror; and gave one nightmares about giving evidence and being cross-examined. She also had a lot of praise for individual judges, solicitors and barristers and said that most worked very hard and did their best and tried to reduce tension between the parties. When one attends a seminar like this one sees how important it is to do what the Minister is doing in this legislation - setting up a proper and good system that will work.

Another person said that the family law courts are still too adversarial in nature, although they are quite important.

There was a lot of talk about alternative dispute resolution. The Minister for Justice and Equality asked the Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality to do some work on the mediation Bill, which is a very important Bill coming down the tracks, and we have done so. Alternative dispute resolution is important, as is the importance of communicating information about it. People should know about mediation and the fact that there are alternatives to an adversarial system in the courts. A Law Reform Commission report from 2008 recommended that compulsory information sessions about ADR should be introduced, and I think that is mentioned in the forthcoming mediation Bill. People would not be forced to attend mediation, but they would have to be aware at least that it is there and what it can do. There are difficulties with ADR, but it is important that people know about it.

The voice of the child is mentioned, as is how reports are dealt with. Historically, the probation service provided social reports to the family law courts, but I understand this service is now being discontinued. That is something that needs to be examined. Family law courts in England and Wales have a dedicated service to back them up, where social reports and reports seeking out the voice of the child can be ordered by the court in respect of any matter concerning the welfare and best interests of the child. Duty social workers are also important.

We had several hearings a few months ago on penal reform, and one of the issues raised was the importance of anger management. One organisation that presented was the Etruscan Life Training and Education Centre, which runs courses in anger management. It also does work on drug use, depressants and so on. Clients who used the service found the anger management courses extremely beneficial. Quite a number of people do not know how to control their emotions. Their programmes include understanding anger, positive parenting, drug and alcohol awareness, dealing with stress in the workplace, and dealing with anger, bullying and so on. We need to start looking at these approaches, under which we encourage the resolution of problems such as uncontrollable anger. In Canada this whole area is known as the family justice system, and they try to make the whole thing more family-friendly and child-friendly.

At the seminar, Gerald Durcan spoke about the limits and danger of specialisation, which was quite interesting. He said that the risk in specialisation is a possible separation of specialist judges from the general body of judges. This is the value of having such seminars, at which these issues are highlighted and discussed. If an issue is identified, it can be discussed and solutions can be suggested. Mr. Durcan maintained that specialisation might cause judges to reproduce previous decisions, which could hamper the evolution of case law. As I am not a lawyer, it is quite interesting to come at it from this angle and see that case law evolves, but if somebody is in a closed system, perhaps they may not be up to speed with the general evolution of the law. Mr. Durcan said there was a particular danger where cases are always taken by the same select group of judges, and spoke about the compartmentalisation of the law and procedures.

When we are setting up specialised courts, there is an opportunity to look beyond the system. I travelled to New York a few months ago to have a look at the community courts system there, and I mentioned this to the Minister more than once. I know he is interested in this and I hope he will bring forward some ideas on it. In 1993, the Midtown Community Court opened as a three-year demonstration project in Manhattan. At the time, Midtown was a no-go area, as were parts of Central Park, Grand Central Station and other areas. What happens now in these courts is that if somebody commits a misdemeanour or a low-level offence, they are brought before a specialist judge the following morning and in order to come before the community court, they must plead guilty. The judge then reviews their files, which will have been prepared overnight, as the court has a very good backup service, which is something our family law courts need here. The judge then makes a decision and, more often than not, this results in community service for the offender. The offender is given 60 or 70 hours of community service and after sentence is passed, the offender is immediately sent to meet probation officers, social workers and others, and the work of community service begins straight away. Recidivism has gone from 80% to 18%. Areas such as Times Square, Central Park and so on are now tourist Meccas. Business people are very pleased with it. The system actually works. It cuts down on the number of people being incarcerated. It also provides value for the community in that work is carried out in the community by these offenders. An offender is monitored for six months. After this the judge reviews his or her file, and if he or she does not re-offend within six months, the files are sealed. There are parallels here with what we are doing in expunging minor offences after a number of years. There are parallels with the Minister's encouragement of community service in the system, which I agree with entirely. There are parallels here with immediate access to justice, and there are parallels with our own policies in trying to cut the number of people in prison. I urge the Minister, departmental officials and others to look at this seriously. The Center for Court Innovation in New York carried out much research on how courts operate, and I think we should do more in that area and look again at the idea of community courts.

I congratulate the Minister and his officials and others involved in this task. This Bill is complex and important. It provides for the selection of additional jurors in lengthy criminal trials. There is a concern that we may have fairly lengthy trials coming up soon, and I do not think we can expect jurors to spend six or 12 months attending trial. We really need to flag that at this stage, so that the Minister can suggest solutions and see how they work in practice.

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