95,000 court summonses yet to be issued as Covid-19 causes major backlog

The Justice Minister has promised more technology to help courts clear the caseload. 

More than €1.7m will be invested in ICT to install video technology to support more remote court hearings, helping to ease the backlog, the minister said. Picture: iStock

The Minister for Justice has promised more technology for Irish Courts to help clear the dizzying backlog of cases.

Although 97,000 cases have been cleared from the backlog since July, some 95,000 summonses — the court documents which legally require a person to attend court — are still waiting to be issued.

Approximately 4,500 additional summonses are being issued every week.

Before the end of the year, €1.7m of the €5m assigned to the Courts Service in the July stimulus package, will be invested in ICT to install video technology systems to support more remote court hearings, Helen McEntee said.

Minister for Justice Helen McEntee TD.

Investing in digital technology to improve the service for court users was "a significant priority" for her department, the Minister said.

Digitising the courts is vital to make the service more efficient and user-friendly both throughout the pandemic and beyond, she said.

There are plans to install remote hearing equipment in 43 more courts over the next few months which will allow more cases to be heard in a safe manner and further reduce backlogs, the Minister said.

Some 1,941 hearings have been conducted remotely across all jurisdictions so far this year.

And the court service is now clearing "multiples" of cases compared to this time last year. 

Ms McEntee said that although a smaller backlog of summonses had existed before Covid struck, the pandemic has hugely exasperated it.

Sinn Féin Justice Spokesperson Martin Kenny raised the issue in the Dáíl today, welcoming the commitment to modernise the court service but also calling on the Justice Minister to “up their capacity significantly” and commit more resources to pay the additional personnel needed to work through the backlog.

Sinn Féin's Martin Kennyweclo9med commitment to modernise the courts service.

“There will be a necessity to have more cases dealt with faster, and I think the time allocated with the number of sittings per month will need to be expanded," Mr Kenny said.

"The argument has previously been made that justice delayed is justice denied, and I think people will be making that argument very strongly from an accused’s perspective."

The Minister said that the District Courts have been looking to extend their hours of operation and said that her department was committed to supplying enough resources to the courts to maintain access to justice for everyone. 

She said that her department had secured the largest ever budget for the justice sector, which included €158.8m for the court service, which included €8m for the court modernisation service and €5.7m for Covid measures to enable court sittings to take place in safe and socially distanced environment.

She praised the service for its "impressive innovation" which allowed it to sit on family law and criminal matters, even during the first phase of the pandemic.

"In the past weeks, even though the entire country was under level 5 lockdown restrictions the courts remained open and dealt with wider levels of business," she said.

New technologies available in the courts should further expedite the backlog while her department examined staffing levels and opening hours, she said.