TWO HIGH Court judges will sit each day in September to assist in the clearing of the backlog of asylum judicial reviews, according to the Courts Service.
The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, announced at the Law Society conference in April that he was asking his colleagues to work in September to help clear this backlog. It has now been confirmed that this will go ahead.
This is the second time that High Court judges have given up some of the two-month summer vacation to help clear backlogs in the lists. In previous years they did so at the request of the then president of the High Court, Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan, to reduce the backlog in the Central Criminal Court.
There are 550 asylum judicial reviews on the list, though not all of them will go to trial. The special hearings in September will mean two will be heard each day, and will remove 40 from the list.
However, the decisions made in these cases will be likely to have an impact on the remaining cases, as they will indicate the likely outcome for cases involving similar circumstances. Many of the asylum judicial reviews settle without being heard.