Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I compliment the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, his officials or whoever compiled the report I have before me. It is clear and raises several interesting questions in respect of how the Bill will be implemented. To begin at the end of the Bill, it provides for a number of miscellaneous matters, including that the assessment application may be made on behalf of a party to proceedings where such person is under the age of 18 or ill or has a disability. The Minister stated that an authorisation is made in that context. It is sort of based on the injuries board application form. However, the application to the Circuit Court must be made within three months of the date of the authorisation. That is a very brief period within which to take legal advice, having received the authorisation, and prepare proceedings for an application to the Circuit Court. Six months is allowed at the injuries board and the three-month period proposed under the Bill seems very short. What are the officials examining in that regard? Anyone who is making an application for this type of compensation will probably have legal aid. Are officials exploring an extension of the legal aid scheme? The Minister of State made the point that consideration is being given to providing for a nominal application fee to guard against unmeritorious claims. It is a new scheme and it would be very difficult for a person who may be entitled to compensation to proceed on what will be a new and complicated area of law without legal advice. I am interested to see what will come forward at a later stage with regard to how that will be implemented. Everybody is entitled to a fair trial. If people are to be punished if the assessment is equal to or less than what is assessed by one of these new assessors, that might be a very unfair decision.

As the Minister of State laid out, the Bill provides for compensation where Article 6 has been breached and the State is obliged to implement it. Article 6 states, "In the determination of ... civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge ... everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law." The Minister of State recognised that under the ECHR there is a right to a fair trial within a reasonable time and an effective and accessible remedy as required by Article 13 of the convention. As the old maxim goes, justice delayed is justice denied. With all the delays in the courts at the moment, people are not receiving trials within a reasonable timeframe. I will deal with that issue later. Facing a trial and awaiting the outcome thereof can be a time of great anxiety, not just for the person who is charged but also, perhaps even more so, for family members or children of the accused person. They experience uncertainty in respect of what they can do with their life, and that can cause serious anxiety. Obviously, the victim needs to be dealt with in a fair and expedited manner, but family members also suffer, sometimes more so than anybody else. Although the Bill arises from criminal prosecutions, both civil and criminal justice systems seem to be under threat at present. We believe in a justice system that is fit for propose and people need to have confidence they will receive justice in the courts without any extraordinary delay.

I understand that some people on the call-over list in the Dublin Circuit Court in January and February of this year have been given trial dates of 2025. In my own time in the courts, this would have been an extraordinarily long period to wait. The picture outside Dublin is not much better. Some 66,000 court summonses are backlogged at present following delays caused by the pandemic, a lack of space for hearings and a shortage of judges. Dates for one-day hearings on the judicial review list, including judicial reviews, are now as late as February 2024. I accept that this is on the civil proceedings side of things. As was seen during the pandemic, some imagination needs to be utilised in the conduct of these trials.

The challenges of people living in isolated and rural areas need to be recognised. There are 245 cases on the list for this Thursday in County Kerry. Three weeks have been set aside for Circuit Court sittings in May and a further three have set aside for July. That is not going to make a huge impact on the list. If a person is charged today in County Kerry, it is unlikely that he or she will receive a date for hearing until at least 2025, even though there are cases on that list going back to 2018 and 2019.

In Limerick Circuit Criminal Court, there are more than 200 cases on the indictable list, which are criminal cases. Having looked at the call-over list, numbers would indicate that those cases were returned to the District Court, again back as far as 2019. Victims of crime, clearly, are waiting years for cases to be heard and for justice to be heard. Some accused persons also have to spend years awaiting trial, often under onerous bail conditions. Where accused persons are in custody, they are given priority but they must still spend months or sometimes years awaiting trial. We all know how overcrowded the prisons are.

In the Civil Circuit Court cases in Limerick, there is a backlog of about 1,000 cases. There is an exceptional delay also in some parts of the country in getting Circuit Family Court matters on for hearing. Even when a case is ready to be heard one could be left waiting a year to have the case dealt with. There is also a side issue in the drain of lawyers from family law cases because of various issues, including the rates of payment under the civil legal aid scheme. These cases affect mostly women and deal with domestic violence-type cases, and all of the resultant cases that arise.

The underutilisation of the extensive new criminal court facility in Mulgrave Street in Limerick is unacceptable. Most days, at least half of the six courtrooms in the building are left idle. Yesterday and today, I understand that only four of the six courtrooms were in use. Both days have been particularly busy day. Complaints were made last year about the fact that the Central Criminal Court was not sitting enough in Limerick. This brought attention to the issue and the Central Criminal Court began sitting there, and did so for a number of months. I understand, however, that the status quo will return. It was recently stated that there would be no more sittings of the Central Criminal Court scheduled for Limerick for the remainder of the year. This means that the most serious of offences, victims, accused persons, gardaí, other witnesses and prison officers will have to travel to other locations such as Dublin for what are often lengthy trials. This will take gardaí out of their stations and up to Dublin for trials when it is necessary for them to be on the front line in their own areas. Trials of this nature should be held in the Munster region. There are ample facilities and the Judiciary has indicated a willingness and a desire to sit there. What are the Minister of State's views on the establishment of a permanent Central Criminal Court that revolves between Cork and Limerick, taking in trials continually from all the surrounding counties?

Will the Minister of State also provide some sort of a timeline for the proposed review of the Circuit Court and District Court areas, which was recommended by the working group? It is my view, which I am sure the Minister of State will share, that access to justice is an important concern and cutbacks must not be the determining factor. The Circuit and District court system can be burdensome and confusing so I welcome the move to modernise it. I am keen that spatial inequalities, especially, are corrected. The availability of quality judges is a concern also. I commend the Government for acting on the report of the working group on judicial resources, but unfortunately there is a risk that the report by the European Commission, which said Ireland is the worst country in Europe for judicial resourcing, has not been acted upon fully.

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