Mediation ‘can solve’ 70% of cases

UP to 70% of cases that come before the Commercial Court could be resolved faster, cheaper and less expensively through mediation, a High Court judge said yesterday.

Speaking at the opening of the Cork Resolution Centre, Mr Justice Peter Kelly said mediation could allow huge cost savings at a time when people “are not in a good position to be discharging lawyerly costs that go on over a long period of time”.

Going through the courts, he said, is “not an intrinsically desirable process” and it puts a strain on litigants, particularly in family law cases, where things said in the witness box “will neither be forgiven nor forgotten”, and “so the bitterness continues, generally, to the detriment of children of the marriage that is in trouble”.