Irish Examiner view: Finding a reliable way to measure the rule of law
The report on the Irish judicial system sponsored by the Law Society of Ireland suffered from its release on a busy news week where attention was grabbed by some, perhaps more sensational, headlines. Picture: iStock
The distribution of the Epstein Files makes it a landmark week for those who enjoy mass data and like to jerry around with it.
Some readers may have been sent a link to what purports to be the inbox of the paedophile billionaire which renders his legally released emails capable of being browsed in a Gmail-style interface.
While many of us have enough challenges managing our own inboxes this ingenious piece of coding and development plays well to everyone with an insatiable appetite for information.
There are plenty of us in the world, but a downside of information overload is what gets missed while we are looking elsewhere.
The report on the Irish judicial system sponsored by the Law Society of Ireland suffered from its release on a busy news week where attention was grabbed by some, perhaps more sensational, headlines.
It can be difficult for a weighty and balanced narrative, influenced by lawyers and academics, to punch its way through the ambient noise of Dublin, Washington, London, and Europe.
The inaugural Justice Indicators report uses a traffic light system to compare our national performance across critical areas such as trust, policing, courts and prisons.
A red light means that Ireland deviates by more than 10% from the European Union or Council of Europe average.
Amber is a variance of between 3% and 10% and green means Ireland is on par with or diverges between 0% and 3%.
The benchmarking statistics are drawn from more than 100 national and international sources.
There is much to catch the attention, with green lights for public trust in the gardaí, judiciary and courts and Ireland’s homicide rate.
Less satisfactorily, the Republic’s spending on policing, courts and prisons attract red lights.
Shamefully, our rate of sexual offences is 43% higher than the EU average. Court cases here take far longer — up to three times — than they do in other Council of Europe jurisdictions.
Ireland has the lowest number of judges per capita in Europe.
What is also notable is the profusion of white traffic lights.
Simply put, these are applied when there is not enough data to make an assessment.
They are the “known unknowns” of the criminal justice system.
Mark Garrett, director general of the Law Society of Ireland, points out that the funding allocated to Irish courts would only keep our health service running for about three and half days.
“A trustworthy and effective justice system is a cornerstone of any democracy, protects individual rights and is vital to the running of a modern economy,” he added.
But a failure to use common metrics is a fatal weakness.
This is particularly evident in the presentation of crime detection rates which can combine historic and contemporary cases which muddles perceptions of current investigative performance.
This is highly relevant for sexual offences and the willingness of victims to step forward.
Suggested changes include publishing average case duration across all courts; reporting backlog size and case ages; disaggregating administrative cases from civil cases; separating historic and contemporary detection rates and standardising police number data reporting.
“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
That was the view of Sherlock Holmes in , a very modern story of power, corruption and blackmail, even if it was written in 1891.
The Law Society’s director-general puts it another way: “We cannot fix what we cannot measure.”
Politicians take heed.
Is there any one of us who hasn’t spent time musing about how things are these days, and compared them, unfavourably, to how they used to be?
Nowhere is change more visible than in our sporting lives.
While soccer sold its soul to the Devil long ago it is just a generation since rugby turned professional.
Along the way our own Five Nations tournament became a Six in 2000 with the addition of Italy.
It evolved into the main engine of growth for what is now an industry conservatively valued in excess of €4bn annually.
But even that behemoth status is not enough to protect it, and its loyal followers, from caprice and whimsical change.
This year’s competition kicked off at 8.10pm on Thursday in order to avoid a clash with yesterday’s opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Italy at which those well-known rugby fans Mariah Carey and Andrea Bocelli were performing.
Setting aside the observation that Ireland versus France — the countries which have shared the honours as champions of the past four years — should be the prime fixture of this series, can anyone seriously put forward an effective argument for scheduling the game on a Thursday evening? Much less allowing events in Milan and Cortina to dictate the timetable?
Notwithstanding the diverting report (in the newspaper , never knowingly undersold in such matters) that German ski-jump competitors have been taking drugs to enhance their crotch area (to improve aerodynamics apparently) TV audiences for the two events tell their own story.
Rugby dominates.
Ireland has four competitors in the Winter Olympics.
Let us acknowledge that France has 161, but it is a country with plenty of snow which also invented apres-ski.
They take these things more seriously there, but curtainraiser (and curtain down) celebrations are novelty events easily viewed on stream and catch-up and should not interfere with the serious business of sport.
The 2026-2027 Six Nations also marked the introduction of split screen advertising while teams scrum down.
It’s an unappealing precedent at the start of a year which also brings us a world cup in the United States.
For those seared by the memory of last summer’s "Fifa’s first ever Club World Cup half-time show, presented by Panini" the auguries are not good.
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