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

Six additional High Court judges were appointed last year, an additional €2 million was provided to prepare the work for the group that will be publishing the report in the coming weeks, there is additional funding for the modernisation programme and a very clear commitment to establish a new family court to take that very difficult situation out of the current structure. That is my commitment. I am making it very clear that we do not have enough judges and we need more. The Deputy touched on a point in his response. We cannot just add judges when greater efficiencies could be found within the current structure as well. Part of the review, led by Brigid McManus, is not just looking at how many more judges we need, but at how we can have greater efficiencies within the system at the moment. It is looking not just at the work that the judges do, including when they sit, how they sit and the hours they work, but how we can include the modernisation programme more to ensure that more people can be seen and more people can be seen at home, in prisons or in Garda stations. It is about making sure that the whole system is interlinked as well, including the Prison Service, the Garda, the courts service, our family law structures and the various different agencies and organisations that work within the judicial system.

Many strands of work are coming together and all of that will lead to a more efficient and effective system. We need more judges, I am committed to providing them and we will have a report in the coming weeks setting out the numbers involved.

See this speech in context