Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I noted my opposition to section 68. The proposed section 68 within the Bill at the moment relates to family law proceedings where concurrent jurisdictions are conferred on the Family High Court, Family Circuit Court and Family District Court. It restricts an application from commencing family law proceedings in the High Court, unless there is a special reason for doing so. I am also conscious of what the Minister said with regard to amendments that are coming on Report Stages. I will not labour the point, but the impetus for imposing the limitations is unclear and it may well be dealt with in due course. However, it would also be the case that any information that we have about these cases has started in the High Court or data from the Courts Service or information from practitioners. I am not a family law practitioner either. I have benefitted from speaking to Paul McCarthy SC, Sara Phelan SC, Tabitha Wood BL, who will become senior counsel next week and Deirdre Browne BL, all of whom are family practitioners and have advised me that there is no basis for suspecting that the High Court is being misused in any way or that litigation is started in the High Court vexatiously. Of course, there are also mechanisms in existence to allow a judge of the High Court to remit the matter down to Circuit Court if he or she feels that this is the appropriate thing to do. Those procedures exist. That backs up the reason I am opposed to this section.

The High Court's constitutional status as a court of a full original jurisdiction is also important because it creates precedent for all kinds of other cases. We have done a lot of work in the family law reporting area to allow the High Court to report on decisions from family cases to therefore guide future courts with regard to how they should operate. If the High Court is no longer the court of first instance for many family proceedings, then where complex cases involving things such as judicial separation and divorce, cohabitation proceedings, etc., the danger is that fewer written judgments lead to the creation of fewer clear precedents in each of those areas, which would not arise, for example, from the Circuit Court. There is an argument that it is not in the public interest to have a situation where the flow of case law from the High Court as a constitutional court regarding decisions on family law matters therefore is a bad thing. As I said, I will not labour the point because the Minister said that this is something that may be dealt with on Report Stage, but I wanted to flag it at that point in the context of section 68.