Courts Service accepts plan for law reforms

THE Courts Service has accepted a plan for wide-ranging reforms of the family law system that will allow the public to follow sample proceedings and enable judges’ decisions to be centrally recorded for the first time.

However the most radical proposals, which would require Government sanction, received a guarded welcome from Justice Minister Brian Lenihan who is to have his department consider them.

Key among the changes urged in a report by Dr Carol Coulter is the establishment of a regional network of 10-15 specialist full-time family law courts, each to be presided over by a dedicated judge holding the position for a minimum of a year.

Under the present setup, Dr Coulter complained that family law sittings were held at irregular intervals with adjourned cases experiencing long delays and being heard by a succession of different judges. Sometimes, she said, family law sessions in neighbouring districts had clashing schedules so that solicitors specialising in the field had to try to be in two places at once.

She said each new permanent family law court should be supported by an expanded family mediation service to ensure all efforts were made to settle cases amicably without recourse to the courts, as well as family support and child assessment services.

She also called for the abolition or expansion of the income limits for civil legal aid.

Dr Coulter, who headed up a pilot family law reporting scheme for the Courts Service for the past year, presented her recommendations to Mr Lenihan and Chief Justice John Murray on her last day in the role yesterday.

Those of her recommendations which fell within the powers of the Courts Service are to be implemented by the service. For the next year a team of barristers are to act as part-time reporters, attending cases closed to the normal media and producing reports for publication on a regular basis while protecting the anonymity of the families involved.

A special committee of the Courts Service will be announced within days to oversee the project and work out a long-term arrangement for the reporting of proceedings.

The committee will also plan for the audio recording of judgments so that all decisions made by judges in family law cases can be collected for the sake of comparison. Details will be fed into a data base so that by 2009 statistics will be available on the types of cases moving through the courts and the outcomes of proceedings.