Report on judge numbers is due ‘in autumn’
Junior justice minister James Browne (pictured) has told the D谩il that a working group set up to advise the Government on judicial numbers is expected to produce its report this autumn.
He was responding to a question earlier this week from Fianna F谩il TD James Lawless, who had asked about plans to increase the number of judges, pointing to 鈥渁 significant gap鈥 between the figures for Ireland and those of other European countries.
Minister Browne said that the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee had just received an interim progress report from the chair of the Judicial Planning Working Group, the former Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills Brigid McManus.
Complexity
The group, set up last year, is looking at the judicial resources that will be needed by all courts over the next five years.
The Government had asked the OECD to carry out independent research to inform the group鈥檚 work, but minister Browne said that it had taken longer than originally anticipated for the OECD to complete its work, 鈥渄ue to the complexity of evaluating the data and analysis underpinning the research鈥.
According to the recently published EU Justice Scoreboard 2022, Ireland had the lowest number of judges per 100,000 inhabitants in the EU in 2020.