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Courts Service acts to avoid 2021 ‘immovable backlog’

A total of 47,000 summonses were scheduled for court hearings from July to mid-October, the Courts Service has said, despite reduced court capacity.

Increases in courts capacity have seen over 55,000 summonses listed in the six weeks since mid-October.

Delays

The Courts Service added that great efforts have been made to reduce delays in scheduling summonses for hearing dates.

The delays had occurred due to the need to reduce the numbers in court since virus restrictions began on 16 March 2020. 

The processing of summonses began again in the last week of July. At the time, there were approximately 101,000 cases awaiting a scheduled date. 

Together with An Garda Síochána, the Courts Service made huge efforts to ensure that the inevitable delays did not become an immovable backlog heading into 2021. 

Interdependent

The processing of summons applications is highly interdependent and both organisation aligned their operations to ensure: 

• Appropriate engagement on availability of judicial resources,
• Capacity in terms of court room time and staff to accommodate increased levels of summons applications while maintaining a safe environment,
• Sufficient capacity in An Garda Síochána to manage an increased level of printing, distribution and servicing of summonses. 

Although listing of summonses restarted in late July, the main focus of District Court operations remained directed at dealing with criminal and family-law cases that needed urgent attention.

At the start of restrictions, large amounts of non-urgent cases had to be block-adjourned to maintain the safe operation of courts.

Despite 40,000 scheduled summonses since late July, by mid-October the backlog of summons applications remained close to 122,000.

An average of 4,600 new applications are received by the Courts Service from An Garda Síochána each week.

Capacity

As the District Courts worked through other adjourned cases, capacity freed up within the system, allowing court offices to increase the scheduling of summons. 

In addition, extra court sittings were agreed with the President of the District Court to target backlogs in Dublin. 

Inroads into the summons backlog are now being made, and it has been reduced to 95,000 applications 

In total, over 97,000 applications have been scheduled since July – with 55,000 of these since mid-October, the Courts Service has said. 

The Courts Service and An Garda Síochána currently meet twice a week to review progress and manage future scheduling.

Waiting list reduced

"The summons’ scheduling waiting list is now being steadily reduced, and we are working to eliminate it completely, despite the COVID environment meaning it is still not business as usual,” a Courts Service spokesman said.

“We will continue to monitor this area closely in the coming months and work with the judiciary and An Garda Síochána to maintain the good progress that is been made.”