The Gazette 1981

INCORPORATED LAW SOCIETY OF IRELAND GAZETTE Vol. 75, No. 5 June 1981 "Justice delayed . . W E welcome the proposal of the President of the High Court for additional sittings of the Central Criminal

research into the authorities which may have been quoted (or, as may happen, not quoted) to the Court during the hearing of the case imposes an intolerable burden on our judges. This is not to say that it might not be a useful dis- cipline if each High Court Judge were to adopt the practice of some members of that Court of indicating the date on which a reserved judgment will be delivered. Deadlines concentrate the mind wonderfully and judges are no exception to this rule. The fundamental question which arises on any consideration of the efficiency of our Courts is whether the administration of the Courts is in the hands of an appropriate body. At present, the control and adminis- tration of our Court system seems to depend on an uneasy co-operation between the judiciary and the Department of Justice. The training and experience of a practising Barrister is not one which confers any great expertise in the skills of administration, nor is it likely to bring much familiarity with up-to-date office systems and technology. The Department of Justice has a remarkably wide range of activities under its control and it would'be surprising if there were not direct relationship between the attention given to certain of those activities and the level of public interest in or comment on them. Clearly, the Courts do not fall into a category of high continuing public interest and the Department's performance in the provision of Courthouses and of adequate facilities for the administration of justice has been less than adequate. An ill-housed system of justice, operating with a creaking administration, will not do much to encourage respect for the law and our system of justice in the average citizen. Other countries have established their Court adminis- tration on a basis independent from their equivalent of our Department of Justice, with the apparent result of greater flexibility in the system and a general improvement in the administration. As light appears to be dawning in Government circles that direct control and operation of public services need not be in the hands of individual departments (even if the reasons for such views are more linked to the oboloquy which attached to the appropriate Minister through the criticism of the performance of his department), it may well be appropriate now to take similar steps with the administration of our Court system and put it on an independent basis. • 93

Court at the end of the long vacation to clear the back log in that Court caused by the foolish statutory provision (now removed by the Courts Act 1981) enabling a defendant to secure the automatic transfer of a case from the Circuit Court to the Central Criminal Court. Unfortunately, the position with regard to Jury Trials set down for hearing in Dublin, Cork and Galway is unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future. It is under- stood that there are now over 3,300 cases set down for hearing, which means that any litigant now setting down his case cannot hope to obtain a hearing before November, 1982. Since, in the majority of personal injury cases, it must be likely that the case will not have been set down until the medical prognosis of the Plaintiff's condition has been decided, probably at least a year to eighteen months after the injury, there can be no likelihood of the case being heard in Court until three years after the events giving rise to the injury. By this time, witnesses' memories will have dimmed, some may have died or gone abroad, thus limiting the prospects of a proper trial. To say that a high percentage of cases is settled is to beg the question. If the proportion of cases settled fell, the waiting time for hearing would lengthen. Another area where the level of service to the public has fallen far below acceptable levels is that of default judgments. It is accepted officially that a period of up to eight weeks elapses between lodgment of papers and signing of the judgment. Such a delay could clearly be fatal to a creditor's chances of collecting the debt. The figures for Summary Summons issued show a doubling within four years and staffing has not kept pace with that increase. Criticisms have again surfaced of delays in the furnishing of reserved judgments in the High Court. Such criticisms must be tempered by the fact that the facilities provided for judges in our legal system are of a kind which practitioners would not tolerate for long in their own practices. To require judges in long and complicated cases to rely on the notes which they have been able to write down during the course of the cases is bad enough, but to add to this the obligation to carry out all the legal