Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The fact of the matter is that we do not have enough judges, and we need more. That is clear. That is why I set up the review group. It is important that we understand how many we need and why we need them. For that reason, the people the Deputy mentioned, who know exactly what is going on in the courts, have been part of this process. It is not just the OECD report. In its final report that will be published in the coming weeks, the group will set out exactly how many judges are needed. Pre-empting that report, over €2 million was allocated in the budget this year to ensure that we can start putting the resources and people in place. While we can put judges in place, we need the support teams within the court structure to be able to support their work. That is already happening and the money has already been allocated. As well as that, to make sure that it is not just about judges and numbers, we have the implementation of the modernisation programme in the courts system. That has received funding over the last two years, to make sure that we are using online resource and to ensure that the judges can be efficient and effective as possible. The Deputy mentioned the family courts specifically. We will be establishing a new family court structure in the coming weeks. I will be bringing forward a Bill as well as a family justice oversight group working plan that will go hand in hand with that. That will set out a completely different court structure, taking all of these family law matters out of the Circuit Courts and giving it its own structure, template and its own specialised judges, which I think will be very welcome.

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