Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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311. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if his attention has been drawn to the fact that District and Circuit Court services are charging €15 per copy to photocopy a one page court order. [51897/13]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that fees charged in the courts are set by means of Statutory Instrument. Court fees orders are made by myself as the Minister for Justice and Equality with the consent of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. The fees currently applicable are prescribed in the District Court (Fees) Order 2013 (S.I. 241 of 2013) and in the Circuit Court (Fees) Order 2013 (S.I. 240 of 2013). Those orders include a fee of €15 that is applicable per copy document and the fee is applied regardless of the number of pages the document contains.

The Deputy should be aware that the fee is not intended to reflect the cost of photocopying a document. There can be other factors involved in the transaction cost of providing the copy, for example, the application for a copy order may omit basic information needed to identify the case such as a case number or accurate court date. The Courts Service has indicated that time spent trying to identify the actual case is also taken into account. In addition, in a substantial number of cases, the copy order requested may relate to a historic case where the relevant information has been archived and there is further work involved in retrieving files and in producing orders where electronic records are not readily available.