Closure of our courthouses is pennywise and pound foolish

Seán O’Riordan’s article ‘Oireachtas grilling due over plan to close court’ (Irish Examiner, October 24) highlights a worrying trend in West Cork.

In a bid to save negligible amounts of taxpayers’ money, many courthouses have been closed since the onset of the recession. It appears Skibbereen courthouse, which the West Cork Bar Association says costs just €12,000 a year to maintain, may be next. The great sweep of County Cork from Kinsale to Berehaven will then be served by just four court sittings: in Bantry, Clonakilty, Bandon and Macroom, a fewer number than at any time since the 1810s.

Surely the recession is not a good enough excuse to remove the natural right and expectation of citizens to have access to the State’s justice system? Most of West Cork’s courthouses were built in the 1820s and 1830s and have served the area well through good times and bad, including war and famine. Although many of them were burned or damaged during the Revolutionary Period of 1913-23, the Free State government realised it was a nationally-important project to rebuild and reopen these courthouses. These are the same buildings which our ancestors paid their hard-earned taxes to repair and keep in a time of scarcity and upheaval.

In addition to providing access to justice for west Cork’s citizens, the county’s courthouses are also the visual manifestation of our common legal system and the protection it offers. In many towns the historic courthouse buildings are the most distinguished works of architecture and almost all are protected structures. What about the ‘additional costs’ which will be borne by various State agencies, including the Gardaí and the HSE in having to travel extra distances to attend court sittings? It is likely the State may end up paying out far more money in the long term on grants to keep these buildings intact and safe, as they rightly should. In some towns, alternative uses for the buildings may be found and in others, non-profit organisations like the Monuments Fund (with which we are involved) may be able to raise the necessary funds to protect and save these buildings for the public, but otherwise the cost will inevitably fall back on the State. We may look back at this spate of closures as a decision which was pennywise but pound foolish.

The people of west Cork are entitled to ready access to justice in their own towns and districts. They should also be proud of the distinguished architectural heritage which these buildings represent as their collective inheritance.

Richard Butler Madison

Wisconsin, USA.

Elizabeth Farrelly

Portobello, Dublin

Directors, the Monuments Fund of Ireland