THE FIRST working day of the new Criminal Court Complex in Dublin saw some teething problems, particularly from the point of view of journalists working there.
Only one of the two media rooms was open, and there were power points on only one wall. There was poor mobile phone coverage for certain networks, causing problems for both phones and laptops.
According to Gerry Curran, spokesman for the Courts Service, this is primarily an issue for the service providers, as coverage was poor in the whole area and the Courts Service arranged for Vodafone to install hardware in the building to increase the level of coverage. An offer had been made to Meteor and O2 to “piggyback” on this infrastructure, but they had not yet availed of this opportunity, he said.
Some of these issues were anticipated by the National Newspapers of Ireland, whose co-ordinating director, Frank Cullen, wrote to the Courts Service last month drawing attention to them. He referred in particular to the need for dedicated seating in courts for the news media, the mobile phone problem and the need for adequate working space.
The chief executive of the Courts Service, Brendan Ryan, pointed out in his reply that there was a seated bench with a ledge in the front row of the public seating in each of the courtrooms, which could be reserved for the media. He said there was also provision for an overflow room for the transmission of court proceedings on large LCD screens, for use in cases with a large amount of media or public interest.
Eventually the two rooms allocated would accommodate 25 working spaces for journalists, and the service was working on providing adequate power points and locker space in these rooms, he said.
Mr Cullen said he would arrange a meeting with the Courts Service to review progress on these issues and discuss basic principles of media coverage of the courts.
Mr Curren said that the complex was at full operation yesterday, that there were no queues and that everything went smoothly in all the courtrooms.