The Minister for Justice has dropped a controversial proposal to introduce legislation aimed at moving some judicial review cases, including planning and immigration cases, from the High Court to the Circuit Court.
The abandonment of the proposal, part of the Civil Reform Bill 2025, which provided for radical reform of civil review procedure and the judicial review process, was announced before the Oireachtas justice committee on Tuesday.
It came after the committee heard strong criticism of the proposal, and of several other aspects of the Bill, from groups including the Legal Aid Board, Bar of Ireland, Free Legal Advice Centres and Irish Refugee Council.
The Construction Industry Federation welcomed proposals in the Bill aimed at curbing the number and costs of planning and infrastructure judicial reviews.
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The committee was hearing submissions as part of its pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme of the Bill.
Joan Crawford, chair of the Legal Aid Board, said there is “already a breaking system” in the Circuit Court and putting additional cases into it “is just not going to work”.
Seamus Clarke, representing The Bar of Ireland, said the overall proposals in the Bill will have the effect of “shrinking” people’s access to the courts rather than increasing access, as proposed in the 2025 report of the civil legal aid review group.
Independent Senator Michael McDowell said the Bill is “naïve” and “needs to go back to the drawing board for many reasons”. Moving judicial reviews to the already overworked Circuit Court is “a horrific idea” and will not work, he said.
Towards the end of the meeting, a department official, present as an observer, said there had been “quite a degree of comment” on the proposal to move cases to the Circuit Court.
The policy objective of the Bill is to improve access to justice and improve efficiencies, he said Minister Jim O’Callaghan now considered that could be “better achieved” through a reformed High Court process and the proposals at issue are to be removed from the Bill.
In a statement later, a spokeswoman for the Minister said: “The proposed reforms of judicial review contained in the Bill will result in significant efficiencies in the judicial review process in the High Court and, as such, Minister O’Callaghan is satisfied that the reforms will eliminate the need to allow for judicial reviews to be taken in the Circuit Court.”
Other proposals in the Bill include that only those directly affected and people with a sufficient interest in the matter can seek judicial review. That could adversely impact people seeking to take environmental and climate crisis challenges, the committee was told on Tuesday.
Eilis Barry, chief executive of the Free Legal Advice Centres, said judicial review is one of the “least researched” areas of law here and research is necessary to establish to what extent judicial reviews are caused by bad decision-making.
The biggest issue from Flac’s perspective is the quality of decision-making in areas including housing and social welfare, she said. Successful judicial reviews had not resulted in improved decision-making in these areas and local authorities continue to apply practices they had conceded were “problematic”.
