Sir, – I believe Mr Bernard Neary, a former registrar of the Court of Criminal Appeal, is seriously mistaken when he states (September 20th) that the backlog of appeals in the Supreme Court could be cleared without creating a new court of appeal with civil and criminal jurisdiction.
Justice delayed is justice denied. The current system of appeals from the High Court to the Supreme Court has produced a bottleneck in the Supreme Court and an increasing backlog of appeals delaying access to that court. Although the techniques introduced in the 1990s to ease the backlog of appeals (which Mr Neary mentions) have since been refined and added to, the backlog continues to grow. In the 1990s, the average number of appeals filed per year in the Supreme Court was 383. In 2012, 605 appeals were lodged. Over 400 appeals have been lodged already this year.
The referendum on a new court of appeal is a key plank in a raft of measures to modernise the courts system and the field of legal services. It is about coherent institutional reform and not tinkering. The Courts Act 2013, which will come into force shortly, is the first step. This will change the monetary jurisdiction limits of the District and Circuit Courts in civil cases. The Bill will increase the monetary limit in the District Court from €6,384 to €15,000. It will raise the maximum award in the Circuit Court from €38,092 to €75,000
In relation to personal injury cases, the monetary jurisdiction limit of the Circuit Court will be €60,000. The District Court and the Circuit Court will be able to deal with more civil cases.
The practical outcome for litigants will be a reduction in legal costs for cases that fall within the respective jurisdictions of those courts.
Mr Neary does not deal with the important question of how criminal appeals – which the Court of Criminal Appeal determines at present – should be dealt with. This is important because that court hears appeals from criminal trials in the High Court (called the Central Criminal Court) and the Special Criminal Court. The Court of Criminal Appeal, which does not sit on a daily basis, faces a backlog of appeals. There are 154 cases in the list awaiting a hearing comprising the following categories – 48 conviction appeals, 86 sentence appeals, 16 undue leniency applications by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Leaving aside cases that have been adjourned from previous lists on the appellant’s application, the current waiting time for conviction appeals is a minimum of 17 months, for sentence appeals a minimum of 12 months and for undue leniency applications a minimum of seven months. This backlog is increasing.
The Director of Public Prosecutions this week expressed concern about the increasing delay in hearing criminal appeals. The problem we can no longer ignore is that the present appeals structure is not fit to deal with the demands of litigation in a modern society. The volume and legal complexity of appeals has increased, again something Mr Neary ignores.
Of course, we should not require the Supreme Court on appeal “to consider and adjudicate as to whether the composite material in a toilet seat caused it to crack and result in some litigant suffering catastrophic injuries to a left index finger”. The real point is that there is a basic flaw in the institutional design of the appeals system. The fact that the Supreme Court faces a backlog of 664 appeals is attributable to this flaw. It will take over four years for these cases to get a hearing. There are 77 cases earmarked for “priority” hearing. But these appeals will take 12 months to be disposed of.
If a court of appeal is set up, the Supreme Court will not have to deal with appeals on matters like minor finger injuries. The lower courts will try such cases. We need to do what is practical and sensible. International best practice endorses the view that a Supreme Court should be charged with deciding legal issues of public or constitutional importance. And that a court of appeal below it should hear most appeals from the courts below it.
Comparable legal systems, like the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States, sensibly take this approach. The Supreme Court should be able to have a manageable list of appeals so that it can give major legal questions the attention they warrant. The United Kingdom Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court each deals with approximately 80-90 appeals a year. The United Kingdom Supreme Court has a reasonable target of dealing with appeals within a period of nine months. This approach allied to other reforms should reduce the cost of access to justice. It should be noted that there is legislation near enactment aiming at reform of the legal-services market in Ireland. There is also legislation to put access to alternative dispute resolution such as mediation on a statutory footing. Mr Neary ignores these important reforms.
Under the referendum proposal, the Supreme Court will hear appeals from the court of appeal if the issue raised concerns a matter of general public importance or it is in the interests of justice that the appeal be heard by the Supreme Court.
So, contrary to what Mr Neary implies, there is a crucial filtering device built into the process. In the ordinary course of events the decisions of the court of appeal will have decisive primacy. And in exceptional circumstances only, the Supreme Court will be able to hear appeals directly from the High Court. The proposed reform will serve the interests of the ordinary taxpayer and assure investors and business that we have an efficient and effective courts system operated by independent judges. It will give the judges a more coherent courts system in which they can improve case-management and case-hearing procedures. It will give the bite of reality to the core human-rights principle that every citizen who has to go to court will get a reasonably speedy judicial hearing and decision.
A Yes vote by a majority of the people in the referendum on October 4th will help to bring the courts system into the 21st century. – Yours, etc,
ALAN SHATTER, TD
Minister for Justice,
94 St Stephen’s Green,
Dublin 2.