Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I support the legislation being brought forward by the Minister of State and commend him on doing so.

We should acknowledge that our courts are as integral a part of the governance of this country as our Legislature and Executive are. All three of them are essential for the purpose of ensuring our democracy functions properly. All three of them are essential for the purpose of ensuring that we have a separation of powers and that the citizen is well served by the institutions of the State. Unfortunately people sometimes get confused between the purpose of the institutions of the State and the individuals who work within them. For instance, sometimes people think that Dáil Éireann's primary function is about the role of the politician and what politicians get out of it but it is not. We are elected here in order to be the representatives of the Irish people and in order to ensure the laws of the Irish people are made in a careful and competent manner. Similarly, the Executive and the Government are there in order to ensure that the policies that are created by the State and the laws that are drafted and voted on by these Houses of the Oireachtas are implemented properly.

We also have to say that the courts are there to serve the citizen. They are there to serve the citizen because the courts are the only place in this country where justice can be administered, and it is administered in public. If you look at three arms of the Government, the Legislature and the Executive, you will see that they are enormously resourced. I mention Deputies and Senators in these Houses, which is an appropriate reference. Deputies can hire two people and Senators can hire a person. We have wonderful staff in the Houses of the Oireachtas who look after us and we have facilities provided to us in order to ensure we have constituency offices. Similarly, if you look at the Executive, Ministers have the support of Government Departments and statutory bodies that feed into those Government Departments and they have a huge amount of resources when it comes to ensuring they can carry out their executive functions on behalf of the State.

If you look at the Judiciary, you will see that we have historically invested little money in our courts. This is part of the reason, as Deputy Mattie McGrath said earlier, there are delays in the courts. The reason there are delays is that as a country we have decided we do not want to invest in the courts to a sufficient extent. The downside of that is not that lawyers or judges miss out but that citizens miss out because they have an entitlement to ensure they have a Courts Service that serves their interests, and that is the primary function of it.

This legislation will increase the number of judges in the country to 190, and I welcome that. Let us recognise that we have a population of 5 million in this country, which means that with 190 judges, we have about four judges per 100,000 people. That is considerably below other European countries. It is probably the lowest of all Council of Europe countries. The Czech Republic has 28 judges per 100,000 people and Poland has 25 judges per 100,000 people. We give out about the Polish judiciary but at least there are sufficient numbers of them. Germany also has 25 judges per 100,000 people.

We need to resource our courts in order to ensure that citizens have ready and quick access to them. We need to ensure that we fund the courts and that the IT systems there are up, modern and professional. If we do not have a professional court system the people who lose out are not lawyers or judges but the citizens of this country, who are entitled to have a system of administration of justice that serves them.

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