THE Courts Services Bill, recommended by the Denham Courts Commission Working Group, should be published before the dissolution of the present Dail, according to the Law Society.
Mr Ken Murphy, director general of the society, praised the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, for the improvements she had brought about so far in the courts system, especially in the reduction of delays. This had come about through the appointment of additional judges and a series of administrative exercises which identified dead wood in the system, he said.
Writing in the current issue of the Law Society of Ireland Gazette, he said: "In the Dublin Circuit Court new litigants in civil cases can now obtain a court hearing date within six weeks of the case being set down for trial. This compares with a delay of two years last July. In family law cases, the delay in the Dublin Circuit Court has been reduced from 16 months to four months, and delays in the hearing of criminal cases have been eliminated."
The same was true in regional courts, he reported.
However, the management of the courts remained fragmented. This was identified as a problem by the Courts Commission Working Group, under the chairmanship of Mrs Justice Denham, which has so far published four reports on the management and financing of the courts.
The first, issued a year ago, recommended that a State agency, to be known as the Courts Service, should be set up to manage a unified courts system. Mr Murphy appealed to the Government to act on this recommendation by publishing the Bill, in order to complete the work of reforming the courts system.