There should be a single court for indictable crime, with the judges drawn from the High and Circuit courts, according to Mr Justice Carney.
Writing in the current issue of the Judicial Studies Institute Journal, Mr Justice Carney, who presides over the Central Criminal Court, argues that dealing with the delays in this court by removing rape from its jurisdiction would be a simplistic and inadequate response.
The delays mean it can take 16 months to get a trial. "If the case has to be adjourned it takes a further 16 months to get it back on the rails," he writes. "There is great distress occasioned by the delay for families seeking closure."
One of the reasons for the great volume of work now being processed by the Central Criminal Court is the inclusion, since 1981, of rape among the crimes that must come before it. The effect of this has been not only delay, but the placing of an excessive burden on the jurors of Dublin, he writes.
"There are now up to six juries being sworn in every Monday, most of them for rape trials. As a result of regularly coming close to running out of jurors it has now been found necessary to summon 500 jurors every Monday," he writes, adding that this is additional to the requirements of the Circuit Criminal Court and the civil side of the High Court.
While the most simplistic solution would be to send rape trials back to the Circuit Court, this would disperse them around the country. This would result in the loss of the unique overview of sexual crime which is now available to the judge in charge of the Central Criminal Court.
It would also mean that the problem of other appropriate cases, such as serious fraud, international money-laundering, perjury, bribery and corruption in the context of high office, being denied access to the High Court could not be dealt with, he says.
Instead there should be a permanent national court for indictable, or serious crime, with a permanent presiding and deputy presiding judge. Judges assigned to it, from both the High Court and Circuit Court, should do so for a substantial period, preferably a year but certainly not for less than a full term. At the moment additional judges are assigned to the Central Criminal Court for short periods, which could be as short as a week. Some trials run longer than that.
He urges reform "in the practice of the Central Criminal Court having one permanent full-time judge and a series of short-term visiting 'bed-and-breakfast' judges".