Retired official queries need for new appeals court

The backlog of cases in the Supreme Court could be cleared without establishing a Court of Appeal, a former courts official has said.

Bernard Neary, who retired as registrar to the Court of Criminal Appeal last year, said it was wrong to make taxpayers pay for a new court during an economic crisis without first attempting to ease delays with existing resources.

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has urged voters to approve a constitutional amendment next month to establish a new intermediate court between the High Court and Supreme Court. He says it is vital to ease the Supreme Court's four-year backlog and leave it free to concentrate on appeals that have major constitutional significance.

The Department of Justice estimates the proposed court would cost between €2.5 and €3 million a year, a calculation based on a working assumption that the court would require 10 judges. The proposal has the support of all the major parties.

However, Mr Neary said the judiciary had succeeded in reducing a similar backlog of appeals in the late 1990s.

He said this was done by removing dormant cases from the list, adopting a “pro-active” approach to querying lawyers on the progress of cases and striking out appeals where it was obvious no effort was being made to see them through. “This is not the first time there has been a backlog in the Supreme Court,” he said.

Supporters of the proposed court, which would hear both civil and criminal appeals, point out that while the High Court has, over the past 40 years, expanded from seven judges to 36 in order to handle the increasing volume and complexity of cases coming before it, there has not been a proportionate development in the Supreme Court.

Suggesting an alternative to a new court, Mr Neary said the District Court should be permitted to deal with all personal injuries claims under €50,000 and the Circuit Court should deal with most other such claims with no limit. Appeals could then stop at the High Court, thus greatly reducing the business of the Supreme Court. The same could apply to all applications for injunctions, family law and judicial review cases.

Mr Neary said lawyers would object to this, as the fees structure was higher in the High Courts.

“The legal profession will say that if you raise the jurisdiction limits in the Circuit Court, they’ll have to take on extra Circuit Court judges. Why not? A Circuit Court judge is half the price of a High Court judge.”

Mr Neary also took issue with an article by Mr Shatter in The Irish Times last week, saying it "never mentioned cost or additional resources at all".

“The hospitals are asking, ‘can we do this more cheaply?’ The gardaí are saying, ‘can we do this more cheaply?’ so they are not replacing gardaí. Yet when it comes to the judicial area, ‘let’s take on a new layer, let’s burden the taxpayer’. There’s no one talking on behalf of the taxpayer in this debate.”

The Supreme Court is, unusually among such courts in other countries, the final court of appeal for all cases thrown up by the High Court, regardless of whether they have a constitutional element. It received 605 appeals last year, up 21 per cent on 2011.