Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The digitisation of courtrooms is also important to facilitate witnesses or expert witnesses who may be in another part of the country or even abroad to be brought into the courtroom using such technology. It happens in some cases but there is not enough of it. A mechanism must be put in place to ensure that can happen. It would speed up the process. Sometimes court cases are delayed or postponed simply because the expertise that is needed at a particular time cannot be accessed. There are solutions to all of this and they must be examined. Modernising court buildings is part of that, but another part is that we must put in place the technology in them to be able to deliver. It has been slow to happen. Great advances were made during Covid, or at least there was talk of great advances being made, but I am not sure how much of that is true. We must examine the modernisation of the system, not just to have better spaces but to have a more effective space so that people can get access to justice quicker, more effectively and efficiently and also at a more affordable cost, which is a big issue in regard to access to justice.

See this speech in context