Mediation ‘can solve’ 70% of cases
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”.
Mr Justice Kelly said the beauty of mediated settlement is that it is an agreed decision where parties are able to come to their own solution rather than a solution dispensed in court that may not suit either party.
Mediation also means there is “no washing of linen of a commercial nature or of a family nature in public or in semi public”.
Mr Justice Kelly said there is also a public benefit to mediation because it helps prevent the courts from being swamped.
“If every case had to go to trial, you wouldn’t be able to have a legal system that was functioning. A vast number of cases settle, but many, unfortunately, don’t settle until the door of the court, at which stage, a lengthy and costly process has been gone through.”
He said lawyers should make clients aware that litigation “is really a path to be embarked upon only as a last resort”.
“Where you have mediation and collaborative practice, you have what, in my view, is the ideal situation where not merely can parties engage in sensible talk, but they can have the necessary supports.”
The Cork Resolution Centre, the first centre in the country dedicated to mediation, is designed to provide an holistic approach to dispute resolution without resource to the courts.
A range of experts from financial, legal, commercial and mental health backgrounds are available for clients.
