Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)

It can be improved and is being improved. To try to ensure we have the capacity, 30 additional judges have been appointed in the past two years through the judicial planning working group. One of the requirements for the additional judges was that there would be reform and changes to have them sit at times when they were not sitting, and that is already happening in some of the courts. I have a breakdown on this and can get it for the Deputy. There has been an increase in the number of certain sittings and certain types of cases being heard. I intend to get approval for a second tranche of the judicial planning working group shortly, which will add a further 20 judges, on top of the 30.

One of the main issues in the UK in the context of the riots over recent months was the access to evidence, in particular of the body cameras the police were wearing. That allowed for a much greater level of early guilty pleas. While body cameras have started to be rolled out here and members of the Garda in Waterford, Limerick and Dublin city centre have them, I want to be sure that all gardaí have them. In the case of the first such prosecutions that have occurred in Ireland, perhaps those prosecutions would not have been secured without them. One of the first ones concerned a person who had verbally abused a member of An Garda Síochána for 15 or 20 minutes. Without that evidence, it would have been difficult for a judge to make a clear decision about what had happened, but that person received a sentence of three months. Where there is such evidence, that makes a huge difference, and that was one of the biggest differences in the UK cases.

Again, the investment in the courts through the budget this year is a recognition it is not just judges who need funding but also their staff, and we are making sure there is capacity within the courts to allow for those additional sittings, not just in Dublin but throughout the country.