Courts Service fund - For once, we see a healthy return

A TOTAL of €932 million has been invested on behalf of people for whom the Courts Service has been holding money.

For the year ending on September 30, 2007, the money earned an average return of 3.9%, despite the volatility of the financial markets.

In 2003, the board of the Courts Service changed its method of investment after an independent report concluded the most was not being made of the assets it was holding on behalf of more than 20,000 vulnerable people who have been made wards of court, by reason of psychiatric illness, abandonment, and children awarded damages.

Bank of Ireland Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors won the contract to manage the fund. Returns last year were depressed by the subprime credit crisis in the third quarter of the year, and earnings for the final quarter dropped to an average of 0.3%.

In normal times such returns would be highly disappointing, but 2007 witnessed the worst downturn in the financial markets since the terrorist attacks of 2001. The average gain of 3.9% is therefore welcome news.

It is a measure of the current climate in financial dealings that it has become news to report that nobody was ripped off.