Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's assurance that she sees that a policy of just shunting cases into the District Court is not appropriate, and her indication that she intends to bring amendments on the next Stage of this legislation to that effect and make sure it will not be used as an economic dumping ground for a great volume of court work.

I fully take the point that if two people have decided on a consensual divorce, there is no reason for them to go to the Four Courts and engage the activities of a High Court judge if there is no genuine concern, for instance, about the children in the family or if there is no requirement for much intervention by the courts or much caution about the result as far as the courts are concerned. I fully take the point that such parties should have a summary procedure whereby they can just get what they have agreed put into effect cheaply, efficiently and locally, if that can be done.

I also take the point the Minister made about parties to domestic violence and the like being forced into mediation. It would be a big mistake if the legislation were to shoehorn people in those circumstances into informal arrangements where they had to confront each other again without any real protection. I do a fair amount of mediation - I was involved in mediation all morning - and if parties do not want to be there, not only is it pointless, it could also be seriously damaging.

That said, I do not know precisely what types of amendments the Minister has in mind. This Bill dates from 2022. It has only reached Committee Stage in this House today. I am not criticising the Minister at all for being willing to amend her own Bill in the way she is proposing and in the way she has outlined she intends to do on Report Stage, but one thing that has to be borne in mind is that Report Stage is usually not the best point at which to consider something complex because a backward and forward exchange of views is not possible unless the House agrees to recommit a particular amendment to committee for the purpose of dealing with it.

The Minister talked about purpose-built courthouse facilities and so on. I have noticed over the past 40 or nearly 50 years the hole in the ground beside the Four Courts where the family law building has been scheduled to be built. I am especially conscious of that hole in the ground because when getting it vacated, there was no compulsory purchase order power in the courts and Dublin City Council was not exactly helpful in getting the site. There was one doss-house in the middle of it, which had been used by drug addicts and drinkers for about 15 years, in my recollection. It is now all clear and should be available for construction soon, which I hope will happen.

On a general point, our system of justice is good when it works well, but one thing it does not do well is act with speed. In the American or British courts, people who have been accused of serious crimes would have been convicted by a jury and put into jail in the space of time that they would still be on the waiting list in our prosecutorial system. There are fierce delays in simple District Court cases now in the context of civil and criminal matters. Matters are put onto lists six months, one year or 18 months away. We cannot be complacent about the delays in our system.

To go back to the point I want to emphasise, I am glad the Minister is going to put down amendments to deal with some of the concerns the proponents of this amendment have raised. I would like to see those amendments, obviously, but we will see them in due course. The point remains that if someone does not have resources and is at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, the consequences of imperfection in the courts system as regards family law disputes are more pronounced than they would be he or she did have resources, and I would hate the system to be such that the wealthier a person was, the greater would be the chance that he or she would get a first-class system in a superior court. Nothing is as tragic as parents who are divided as to access or custody of their children, and there are not two classes of children. There is only one class of child and there is only one class of parent, too, in those circumstances.

For that reason, it is reasonable to demand that positive proof be put before this House and the Lower House that the reform of the system has been accompanied by the allocation of resources sufficient to make the administration of justice not a two-tier matter but a single standard of excellence before we allow any Minister - it could be anybody - to press the button and give a green light to what could otherwise be an unwise increase in the volume and, therefore, a diminution in the time and resources available to family law cases by reason of vesting a greatly enlarged jurisdiction in the District Court.