Court sittings throughout the country are to be “scaled back” starting on Friday with the District Court only hearing “urgent” matters and no new trials to begin in either the Circuit Criminal Court or the Central Criminal Court for the next two weeks.

A marked decrease in waiting times for Supreme Court cases has been noted in the court’s latest annual report.

The chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has described the proposals by the Courts Service to overhaul the fines system as cheeky.

The Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee has expressed “grave concern” after it emerged that just one in 10 people ordered to surrender their driving licence actually did so before the courts.

The court poor box into which defendants in Kerry could pay money to avoid convictions has been scrapped.

More than 70,000 drivers disqualified since 2012 who have failed to surrender their licences cannot be pursued by the courts due to a legal loophole, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

A judge in Tralee last year ordered payments to the poor box which were 133 times more than the judge in Ennis, it has emerged.

The legal ban on courts refusing bail to people facing domestic violence charges needs to be reviewed by the Government, according to Women’s Aid.

As Women’s Aid launches its new report on domestic abuse and the Irish criminal justice system, Ivana Bacik writes how despite recent positive legal reforms to the law on domestic and gender-based violence there continues to be serious issues in the system that need to be addressed immediately

A surge in injury claims paid by taxpayers is being blamed on State agencies failing to learn from mistakes and tackling the causes of costly cases.

The country’s judiciary claimed more than €1m in expenses for the first six months of this year.

A sharp rise in the number of motorists being banned from driving this year has been linked to increased enforcement levels by gardaí.

The Courts Service has said a new initiative giving motorists a further chance to pay a fine for a road traffic offence, rather than go to court, explains a dramatic reduction in speeding convictions.

The vast bulk of offenders who refuse to pay court fines are getting away scot-free and the entire enforcement system is “increasingly futile”, court documents reveal.

The current family law system is “broken” and failing the most vulnerable people in Irish society, a conference has heard.

Almost €1.74 million has been paid out from the court poor box to various charities in 2018, according to figures released by the Courts Service.

Chief Justice says cases are being heard in ‘dreadful conditions’

A psychological report found that the child was physically and emotionally abused by her father and when she was old enough “the father recruited her to join him in the abuse of the mother”.

Women’s Aid has described as a “scandal” the delay in the construction of the promised state-of-the-art family courts complex.

Mandatory life sentence given for murdering Nicola Collins

The banning of live texting and tweeting by members of the public from the courts will “protect the integrity of Irish trials”.

Almost 3,800 repossession orders were granted by the courts over a four-year period, figures released to the Irish Examiner have revealed.

The State Claims Agency is to appeal a discovery order granted to a chronically ill man who is seeking a list of the chemicals he was exposed to while working as a technician in the Air Corps.

A decision is due shortly on a likely controversial relocation of the court services in Tralee to a largely-disused army barracks.

The cost of electronically tagging prisoners has quadrupled in the past four years but still remains considerably cheaper than keeping convicted criminals in prison. 

A High Court judge has appealed for the appointment of more judges, saying numbers here are “rock bottom” versus the rest of Europe and much of the rest of the world and are endangering the proper administration of justice.

Drivers who claim not to have received fixed charge penalty notices in the post to try to get away without paying the fine or receiving penalty points will find the loophole cut off from June 1.

Ireland is among the top countries in the world for subscriptions to Netflix, the global internet TV, film, and entertainment streaming service founded in the US.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has been accused of making a “mockery” of the fines system after figures show almost €50m has not yet been paid.

Ireland’s biggest ever Euromillions winner, Dolores McNamara is “heading down to the pub” today in her quest for justice over a road traffic accident.

Financial Services Minister Eoghan Murphy has said there is room for the Law Society and small businesses to work together to identify the costs of public liability claims.

The Courts Service in Limerick has begun hand delivering letters to addresses where orders for repossession are to be made by mortgage lenders, as part of new security measures to block courtroom demonstrations by protestors.

Thousands of notices to appear in court for the non-payment of fines will be issued soon as part of new legislation to crackdown on defaulters.

Review follows case where disqualified driver back on roads

Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan said she was not endorsing “the use of physical force” when she wrote to the Courts Service asking that the period of time a dissident republican was spending on remand be cut.

The number of people being jailed for failing to pay court fines has fallen by around 1,000 following the introduction of laws aimed at effectively eliminating the sanction.

Almost €1.3 million was paid in fines into the court poor box in 2015.

Businesses are struggling to combat the rise of cyber criminality which continues to grow increasingly sophisticated, according to a major new report.