Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The purpose of this section is to amend section 46 of the Courts and Court Officers Act 2002, which has not been brought into operation, to remove the possibility of judges being required to deliver judgments within prescribed periods but to preserve the requirement for a register of reserved judgments which is accessible to the public. I have concerns that section 46 as it stands might be perceived as an inappropriate interference with the exercise of judicial functions and the reason for this amendment is to avoid any such suggestion of interference.

The proposed new subsection (3) provides that as long as a judgment is undelivered, the proceedings in question will be listed before the judge or, where there is more than one judge, the senior judge, at intervals of two months and the judge will indicate on each occasion when he or she intends to give judgment.

Subsection (4) provides that where proceedings are listed before a judge in accordance with subsection (3), the judge shall specify the day on which he or she proposes to deliver judgment in proceedings.

Subsection (5) provides that the date specified by the judge shall be entered in the register of reserved judgment and where the proceedings have been listed more than once, the most recent dates specified shall be entered in the register. Paragraph (b) provides for the repeal of section 46(9)(b). That is consequential on the changes I have described. Paragraph (c) replaces section 46(10) with a new subsection to make clear that in the case of court constituted of more than one judge, the listing of the cases for the purpose of the register will be before the most senior judge in accordance with section 9 of the Courts of Justice Act 1924, as inserted by section 9 of the Courts (No. 2) Act 1997. The existing subsection (10) refers to the presiding judge of the court, a phrase which is defined in the Courts (No. 2) Act 1997 as the Chief Justice in the case of the Supreme Court and the presidents of other courts in their respective courts. However, many courts constituted of more than one member will include only ordinary judges, so it is necessary to change the law slightly to bring that about.

On the broader principle it is important that where judgments are reserved by a court the parties to the judgment have a clear sense on leaving court that there is some momentum in the process and that it will not simply be put on a shelf and addressed when the judge gets around to it. The purpose of the section is to require that there will be a register of reserved judgments, so that if any judge is falling into arrears with his or her work — that can happen for a variety of reasons — a warning bell will sound not merely to the president of that judge's court, but also to the public at large that an accumulation of reserved judgments exists in the case of that judge. The purpose is to effectively motivate the members of the Judiciary to address the question of reserved judgments and to keep it constantly fresh in their minds that they have not yet delivered judgment in a particular area.

Some people may think we should trust the Judiciary to deal with matters. In my experience, the vast majority of the Judiciary work extremely hard and extremely well to deliver their caseload in terms of judgments before them. However, I have known it to be the case on occasion in the past that some judges have, under the weight of the work they have undertaken, begun to fall far in arrears with delivering judgments in the cases they have heard. The result is a very unhappy one, which most public representatives will recognise. When people come to their clinics to ask what can be done about it, there is very little a public representative can do because, by definition, a letter from a public representative to anybody in the Courts Service in those circumstances would be immediately misunderstood and could be very damaging and compromising to everybody concerned.

Some judges have allowed significant arrears to accumulate and it was the view of the Government in proposing the original legislation that this must be addressed by some form of public incentive to the Judiciary to keep arrears within reasonable limits. The original section was never commenced because of judicial hostility to being told judgments must be delivered within a specified period because, they would say, the interests of justice may require them to delay judgment in particular circumstances. The new approach is that if the judgment is not delivered within a reasonable period the judge must have it listed before him or her again by the registrar and announce a substitute date on which it is intended to deliver the judgment. It is an incentive to delivering reserved judgments and a disincentive to leaving reserved judgments undelivered.