Ms Angela Denning:

I thank the Chairman for the invitation to appear before the committee. I am accompanied by Mr. Tom Ward who is the head of superior court operations. I look forward to discussing any aspect of the Courts Service’s application of the UNCRPD with the Chairman and the members of the committee. My remarks will focus on how we deliver services to people with disabilities as well as on the impact of the Assisted Decision-making (Capacity) Act 2015, which was enacted because of Ireland’s ratification of the convention.

The Courts Service is responsible for the management and administration of the courts. As the committee is aware, the administration of justice is a matter for the judiciary and, in accordance with the constitutional independence of the judiciary and the provisions of the Courts Service Act 1998, is outside the scope of the functions of the Courts Service. Separately, the Judicial Council is an independent body that was established in December 2019 and oversees the education and training of the judiciary.

The committee will appreciate therefore that in my discussions today I am precluded from commenting on any matter relating to the exercise by a judge of his or her judicial functions, any matter relating to the exercise of quasi-judicial functions by an officer of the court or matters relating to the training of judges. I am also, of course, precluded from commenting on matters of Government policy.

The Courts Service was established to support the courts in the administration of justice. This is a unique role supporting the third branch of government. In 2019, the service adopted a ten-year strategy to support a whole-of-system reform, driving behavioural and organisational change. This long-term vision of the service of the future is an ambitious vision of a modern, transparent and accessible courts system that is quicker, easier to access and more efficient.

We take our commitment to serve all persons equally very seriously and strive to ensure that our commitment to public service values ensures that the court user is at the heart of all services provided.

The Courts Service will be publishing its public sector duty action plan for the years 2024 to 2027 in the coming weeks. Included will be a commitment to ensure that a evidence-based approach to service design focusing on the needs of users, is adopted and progressed as part of our modernisation programme. The plan also includes commitments to implement further training to develop awareness of human rights, equality and support our vulnerable court users and that their needs are addressed in customer charters developed by offices.

We deliver our services through our people. In 2023, 7% of our workforce have self-declared as having a disability. The Courts Service provides reasonable accommodations include tailoring roles to suit the individual and providing equipment to support those with disabilities do their jobs. Our disability liaison officer supports staff with disabilities and their line managers by the provision of necessary information, appropriate contacts, guidance, suggestions and advice.

Our people and organisation strategy 2022-2024 sets out how we will support the organisation and its ambitions by providing the right support, structures, skills and environment for our people. The strategy is a significant commitment to embed ways of working that promote human rights and create an inclusive and diverse workforce. By embedding human rights and creating diversity, we seek to ensure that our staff will have a greater appreciation and awareness of challenges faced by minorities and vulnerable users accessing justice.

The equality, diversity and inclusion agenda in the Courts Service is being driven by its inclusion group. This group aims to ensure the Courts Service is not just compliant with equality and human rights legislation but that we change our culture so that we proactively strive to achieve a diverse and inclusive work environment, protecting the human rights of staff and users. A key aim of the inclusion group is to enhance service delivery for neurodiverse users and staff. We were an early adopter of the just a minute, JAM, card initiative in the public service and our offices and lanyards prominently display the logo, encouraging users that it will be okay to take just a minute when they call to a public counter. Last October, we ran events where representatives of AsIAm, ADHD Ireland and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland and discussed what it was like for people with neurodiverse backgrounds to access our services. Since last autumn, we have begun discussions with AsIAm to explore the possibility of accreditation of courthouses to become autism friendly. Some 180 staff have participated in a new Irish Sign Language training course and more than 100, staff including the senior management team, have received plain English training from NALA.

Our challenge daily is to provide the best possible service to all people living in the State within the available resources. We are a geographically dispersed organisation with 117 courthouses and offices across all counties. The majority are heritage buildings built well before the foundation of the State and were designed to intimidate rather than accommodate. It is Courts Service policy that all newly constructed buildings are fully accessible. We have also adopted the approach that where at all possible full accessibility should be provided even in refurbished heritage buildings which otherwise might in some respect be exempted. We acknowledge that there is work to be done in some of our older building stock to facilitate access to services for physically disabled people. The large variation in community type and size we serve in our courthouses directly impacts on venue utilisation. The question to be considered in retrofitting these venues is whether the usage of the building justifies investment.

Everyone who attends court presents with a different set of circumstances, a varying degree of understanding and a personalised set of needs. We recognise that access is about more than physical access to buildings. Our objective is to focus on redesigning services around the user that will allow us to deliver services that are inclusive to all and easier, quicker and more cost-efficient for all those who use them.

Many marginalised groups neither recognise their problems as legal ones nor identify the potential legal remedies for those problems. We are conscious that access to clear, easily understood information, an understanding of court processes and inclusion in court proceedings needs to be provided in an atmosphere of equality for all litigants. We have engaged with representative groups and end users from many backgrounds to understand their pain points in the current systems and to design an inclusive and accessible future state.

We have taken measures to improve access to the courts including the provision of interpretation services including for sign language in an increasing range of cases and for jurors and an upgraded website with clear, plain English information on all aspects of family law and debt. We have also mandated the use of plain English and fonts which are more easily read by users with literacy challenges in all correspondence.

A user-centric approach was taken in the design of application forms for the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015. For new applications for one of the decision-making arrangements, we have provided user-friendly information on our website and a dedicated helpdesk which supports both our own staff as internal customers and external enquiries from families, legal and medical professionals. Our offices of wards of court and the general solicitor have been proactive in encouraging wards of court and their committees in applying early for discharge from wardship.

Thus far however, the rate of application for discharge has been disappointingly low and there appears to be a number of reasons for this including: contentment with the existing wardship processes; cost and effort in applying for discharge from wardship; the life expectancy of the ward; the absence of support for sometimes elderly committees; and uncertainty and cost associated with the new supervision regime. We will be continuing our efforts after the one-year anniversary of the commencement of the Act this Friday to encourage more people to apply for discharge.

We have increased the number of video enabled courtrooms to 138 and provided 360 degree virtual tours to help orientation and worked with the National Advocacy Service to arrange visits to the courtroom in advance of a hearing for vulnerable witnesses. In 2023, our access officer received 147 requests for assistance from court users.

We have committed as an organisation to digital-first but not to digital-only. It is our ambition over the course of our modernisation programme to reduce the requirement to attend at court offices and courthouses through the use of improved digital services designed to best serve users. Accessibility considerations are integrated into each stage of development of our new systems. We engage early with the National Disability Authority, NDA, use the design principles as outlined in the Action Plan for Designing Better Public Services and we engage third parties to audit our public-facing web applications for compliance with accessibility best practices prior to release. Lessons learned from one project and one audit are applied to other projects as they share technology and design patterns. By integrating accessibility into each stage of the development life cycle, the Courts Service aims to ensure that our applications meet the requirements set out in the EU web accessibility directive, providing equal access to all users, regardless of their abilities or disabilities.

However, modernisation is not all about IT. It is primarily about people. It is our aim to take a very user-centred approach to everything we do. Ultimately, we want to benefit our service users and will be dependent on them joining us on the journey. We interact with a diverse and complex range of users across a range of services and channels every day. It is my intention that our modernisation programme will provide just, user-centric, simplified and timely access to justice. We intend to do this by maintaining the innovation and agility we have demonstrated over the past four years, by collaborating with users and by keeping the needs and requirements of those who are the furthest behind at the centre of everything we do.

I am happy to take any questions members have.