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Irish Courts Service approves eCourts 
Friday, August 10 2001
by Mary O'Neill


The government has announced that it is to revolutionise the Irish courts system
with an eCourts project that will link courts for information sharing.

The project was approved by the board of the Irish Courts Service on Friday



The project, which is expected to take five years to complete, will cost
approximately EUR50 million and will computerise the many of the processes and
procedures of the court that had previously been undertaken manually.



It will, according to the Irish Courts Service, "lay the foundation for court
users to conduct business with the Courts Service electronically in the future."



Included in the package will be a civil case management system, which will
monitor, control and track civil business, including family law cases across all
court jurisdictions. It is hoped that eventually legal practitioners will be able
to file submissions and payments of financial transactions to the courts under a
secure e-commerce provision.



Currently Ireland's 70 district courts are now cabled to the central court
offices in Dublin. In addition to this Dublin and Limerick district courts have
also finished initial work on a criminal case management system that will be
installed over the coming months.



This system is to be enhanced under the new programme to include the Circuit and
Central Criminal Courts together with the Special Criminal Court and the Criminal
Court of Appeal.



A dedicated court Web Site has also been completed that can be accessed at
www.courts.ie. It contains a daily update of the Legal Diary and additional
information on the courts system and the courts service. The site is to be
developed further to include the publication of judgements, educational and
heritage sections.



Other plans for the eCourts system include the establishment of a financial
management system as well as a courts accounting system.



When the plans for the project were finalised in February, the chief executive
officer of the Courts Service, PJ Fitzpatrick said that Irish society is changing
rapidly and that this must be taken into account when implementing the various
aspects of the country's courts system.