Ms Angela Denning:

On the supports, everybody has a constitutional right to access the courts but nobody really wants to go to court. Anybody who has been in a Garda station is usually in worse humour by the time he or she gets to court. We offer support to our staff. We have the employee assistance officer that every Civil Service organisation has. We have recently given de-escalation training to some very front-line staff because we have had incidents of violence and aggression. It is a question of trying to calm things down before violence and aggression arise. We have offered trauma-informed training to our staff and there has been a very high take-up. There have been 666 participants so far out of a workforce of 1,269. The staff would say they found the training to be a great support to them in their work lives as well as in dealing with the public. They would also say peer support is unparalleled. They say there is very strong peer support and that this has helped with their resilience.

I am aware that the Judiciary does training but I do not know the level at which it is done or any other details. I was at a conference on Friday at which a significant portion of the day was given over to training.

Regarding the modification of heritage buildings, I am delighted that the Senator’s son had a good experience at the Criminal Courts of Justice. Modification is a genuine challenge for us. The average age of our buildings is more than 160 years and many of them have protected interiors. We cannot do anything with the interiors. There are many courthouses where you can go a certain distance inside but then face a challenge. You might face a challenge getting to the witness box, for example, and have to give evidence from the floor of the courtroom. We have wheelchair-using judges who have difficulty in some courthouses. It is a genuine challenge for us. Our aim is to have a fully accessible courthouse in every county town so we can transfer our work into fully accessible venues. In this way, we can try to consolidate the work and best help users. There is a challenge in that the regulations will change. It is not just about accessibility; it is also about independent accessibility. Therefore, we are going to have to look again to ensure that, for example, doors that must currently be held open for you can be opened yourself with a button so you can get around.

We are building a new family court building on Hammond Lane in Dublin, which was granted planning permission very recently. The building will be fully accessible all the way from the front door to the judge's bench so that Courts Service staff, judges, court users and anybody, no matter their ability, can get around the building. We liaised with nearly 35 organisations to design the building and I am very pleased planning permission has been granted.