THE NEW Courts Service will be controlled by the judiciary, recommendations published last night suggest.
The recommendations are included in the third report of the Denham committee, which calls for urgent action to protect citizens' fundamental right of access to the courts.
The right of access to the courts is "much more profound" than simple consumer rights, according to the report from the Working Group on a Courts Commission, chaired by Mrs Justice Susan Denham of the Supreme Court.
The report, Toward the Courts Service, is aimed at progressing the creation of such a service
The Government has already agreed that such a service should be established and that it should be independent.
The report proposes that the judiciary should occupy nine of the 17 places on its executive board and that the Minister for Justice should have no power to remove them.
The committee sets out the heads of a Bill to create a Courts Service.
It provides that the service will draw up a strategic plan every three years. This will be submitted to the Minister for Justice and laid before the Oireachtas.
The service will publish an annual report, and its accounts will be subject to scrutiny by the Comptroller and Auditor General.
The executive board will include members of the judiciary, lawyers, a consumer representative and an ICTU nominee.
It will be chaired by the Chief Justice or by his or her nominee.
The service will appoint a chief executive who will not be a civil servant. The chief executive could, it is envisaged, be called before an Oireachtas committee to answer questions about how the service is administered.
The report envisages that the Minister could transfer ownership of court buildings from local authorities to the Courts Service. Similarly, the Four Courts could be transferred from the Office of Public Works to the service.
Court buildings will need to be modernised, it says, and a seven-year plan is recommended to achieve this.
As a matter of policy the service should be as effectively run as any comparable service in the world. Courts Service staff with suitable qualifications, status and service should be eligible for positions such as Master of the High Court, Taxing Master and County Registrar.
The report calls for modernisation of the wards of court, accountants' and general solicitors' offices which handle large sums of money and where "procedures are all manually operated by a dedicated staff without appropriate support and under exceptionally difficult circumstances."
The report also suggests that there are ways in which the Courts Service could earn money, such as renting out unused buildings and providing new commercial services, but it does not say what these might be.