Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, to the House to discuss the urgent need to appoint more judges to the High Court to avoid the unnecessarily high costs currently being imposed on parties to actions by having their cases postponed from sitting to sitting without any hearing taking place. I have raised this matter because of the experience of my company a short time ago. This experience gave me a new insight into the problems of legal costs, which are a major concern to most businesses. However, this experience highlights significant inroads could be made into these costs at a relatively small expense to the State by appointing more High Court judges. What happened is typical of what happens every day at the Four Courts. The report I received from my own executive states:

It is a regular contention that the willingness of insurance companies to settle claims on an economic basis rather than fight has had the effect of pushing premiums higher for the country's businesses.

We have recently spent five days in the High Court in the Four Courts. It would appear that the bottleneck that is the High Court is the cause of this headlong rush to settle.

Eager to fight, we arrived with our solicitor, S.C., engineer, medical experts and witnesses. The Case List for the day contained 30 cases, of which we were #26. This resulted in the case not being heard that day, and being carried forward to the following day. The following day our case was superceded by the 30 cases listed for that particular day. As our case was not heard that day, it was re-listed for 2 months later.

Two months later the identical sequence of events occurred, resulting in a further loss of 3 days, and a cost of 3 days legal fees, of approximately €4,000 per day. This scale of costs will also have been incurred on the plaintiff's side.

We are therefore in the position that, without one word being heard by a judge, approx. €40,000 has been incurred in legal fees/costs directly attributable to appearances in the High Court.

In isolation, this is extremely frustrating, but if one is to examine the cost implication for Irish business as a whole it is quite alarming.

On that particular day, with 50 cases on the list, legal/other costs incurred could have amounted to 400,000. Only 4 cases were heard that day.

Due to the restricted number of judges sitting on any given day, the choice is straight-forward: settle in order to avoid returning or elect to return and incur further costs.

Currently, I understand there are 22 High Court judges in the country. 5 are assigned to Tribunals/investigations. The situation where 2 or 3 judges are sitting is no longer acceptable, given the backlog and the huge cost involved.

Apart from the cost implications, the only way to curb fraudulent and exaggerated claims is to expose them to the full rigour of the judicial process. The current position is that it is almost impossible to achieve this, due to the shortage of High Court judges sitting at any given time.

The Minister for Justice needs to follow up on his recent advertisement for Judges, and appoint a number to the High Court as a matter of urgency.

He may also wish to review the Legal calendar, as there may be an opportunity to extend the days/hours in with the Courts are in operation, in a manner not dissimilar to the recent Dáil restructuring!

Why does the Government regard the appointment of more judges as something to be done with great reluctance? Using a simple cost benefit analysis, it offers good value to the nation. I am delighted the Minister is present but I suspect he will say the passage of the PIAB legislation will resolve this problem. It will not because the PIAB will not deal with cases where liability is at issue or cases which are suspected of being fraudulent. In addition, cases that fall within the board's jurisdiction are not prevented from being taken to court subsequently and cases that go beyond the board's process are likely to be taken to a full hearing.

The President of the High Court has been reported as saying PIAB will not have a material effect on the workings of the High Court, the number of cases coming before the High Court and, accordingly, the number of cases with which the Judiciary and the High Court must deal. I welcome the PIAB legislation, which is worthy and is a step in the right direction but this other problem remains. I could not believe the number of cases that are listed and the number of witnesses on both sides who must hang around. The appointment of one or two judges would result in a significant saving.