REDUCED NUMBERS of court staff have led to an “unacceptable” situation where legal actions cannot proceed because there are no registrars available to sit with judges, the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, said yesterday.
Registrars are crucial to the running of the courts as they draw up and record the orders made by the court, thus finalising the outcome of cases. They also perform administrative and managerial functions. Without registrars in court, cases cannot run
Mr Justice Kearns made his remarks before lawyers and litigants who were in his court for the allocation of cases in the non-jury and judicial review list for hearing.
One of the actions was listed for two weeks and the judge said he would hear that but it was not possible to allocate other cases for hearing because of staff shortages.
There were two judges available to take the five other cases listed but there were no registrars due to “the imposition of these shortages” on the Courts Service, he said. This was “unacceptable for legal practitioners and the public”, he said.
In a statement, the Courts Service said it had agreed a contingency plan with the president of the High Court for temporary filling in of two High Court registrar positions, where there are three vacancies at the moment, out of a full complement of 28 High Court registrars.
Due to the contingency plan the impact of the shortages had been minimised, it said. “These posts have been identified as key operational posts and applications for sanction to fill the vacancies were made to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in late 2011,” it said.
“We have emphasised the urgency in relation to the filling of these posts and are awaiting a response. In the meantime every effort is being made, in conjunction with the president and the judges of the High Court, to limit the impact of the vacancies on court hearings.”
Fifty staff are retiring from the Courts Service this month. This will reduce staff in the service to 906, 175 less than at its peak. According to its latest annual report, the courts are now dealing with 40 per cent more matters than they were five years ago.