A Tipperary TD has slammed waiting times in the District and Circuit Court being faced by victims of domestic and gender-based violence.
Figures released by the Courts Service to Sinn Fein’s Martin Browne show the current waiting time for hearings in Family Court can stand anywhere between 3 to 24 months, depending on the area.
Victims of abuse can apply for an 8 day interim barring order however, they need a full hearing to get a three year order something he says is impacted by a lack of staff.
In Thurles there is a four week wait, eight weeks in Clonmel, and 12 weeks for those in Nenagh.
Deputy Browne says this is putting more women and children in particular at risk.
“A lack of Judges or the system that is in place – that they haven’t the staff in place to deal with the cases. The government needs to invest more in the court services and that will help speed up all the situations that we are talking about. To be fair we are probably talking about in most of these cases of domestic violence and gender based – women and children that are in danger they have to face this on a daily basis and so anything we can do to speed up this must be done and must be done straight away as far as we are concerned.”
He also told Tipp FM that this shows Fine Gael are failing when it comes to ensuring equal access to justice.
“They are failing as far as we are concerned, Fine Gael in particular they have been in government and in the justice department for over 10 years and these situations are being continued. Look they paint themselves as the law and order party and whereas there are blockages in the system like this. As I said we proposed €5.7 million which is drop in the ocean in the overall content of the spend in the department of justice but the difference that would make that if you have extra judges in the district and circuit court to families who find themselves in these situations would be massive.”
