Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

At present, it is entirely at the discretion of a District Court justice to keep his or her personal notes. I am sure some of them keep such notes for the purposes of clarity or, as with an aide memoire, to assist them, particularly in circumstances where cases involving similar matters might arise. The work of the District Court is extremely pressurised and varied. The 1851 obligation was introduced because district court justices were not dealing with such a large volume of cases at that time. I am not sure it would be of assistance to require a District Court justice to act as a stenographer or record-keeper, particularly because matters are revisited in their entirety — without reference to what may or may not have been said in the court of first instance — when they go to the higher court.

If, for some reason, the keeping of notes might prove helpful from the perspective of managing the court system in general, I would, like many people, be open to persuasion on the matter. However, there is no clear reason note-taking would add to the efficiency of the courts in any respect.

We received legal advice from the Attorney General, who noted that in the cases of Friel v. McMenamin 1990 and Hegarty v. Fitzpatrick 1990 the court refused to permit the applicants to have access to the note of the evidence required under section 24 of the Act of 1851 and expressed the opinion that if the current law, de facto, renders irrelevant the note of evidence pursuant to section 24, it might impose too onerous a burden on the District Court to make that section important again. In other words, there have been rulings in certain cases which render redundant the notion — I would not call it a requirement — under the 1851 Act to have notes kept because the provision does not currently operate and has no particular relevance. I do not see what efficiencies would be gained by its reintroduction, other than allowing certain people to request the production of such notes.

I do not see the value of keeping notes such as those to which we are referring. Anyone who visits the District Court will be aware that one is obliged to do a great amount of learning and unlearning when observing its proceedings.