by Matthew Austin February-03-2016 in Litigation & Dispute Resolution
Matthew Austin offers an overview of the first year of the new Irish civil and criminal appeals system.
Following the 33rd amendment to the Constitution the Court of Appeal (“the Court”) came into existence on 28 October 2014. The Court is intended to assist with the serious backlog in appeals which had built up in the Supreme Court. It is illustrative to note that in 1968 the High Court had seven judges in total with the Supreme Court dealing with all appeals arising. In 2013 there were 36 High Court judges generating appeals for the Supreme Court. The volume of High Court business had grown significantly but the appellate system had not changed to match it.
On the Court’s establishment, a very large number of the appeals which had occupied the Supreme Court’s list were transferred to the Court of Appeal.
However, the Court is also charged with dealing with virtually all appeals from the High Court from 28 October 2014 onward. Only in very limited circumstances can appeals move directly from the High Court to the Supreme Court. The circumstances in which a right of appeal arises from a decision of the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court are also quite limited.
Heavy workload
In order to deal with its heavy workload, the Court of Appeal was armed with a list of rules making up its practices and procedures which were designed to achieve justice, expedition and the minimisation of costs. The rules also divided the appeals out into two types of appeals – ordinary appeals, and expedited appeals
As the name suggests, the rules provide for a quicker process for expedited appeals. However, the rules also provided that only specific types of cases can avail of the expedited process.
While the Court of Appeal deals with both civil and criminal appeals, its business in relation to civil appeals is perhaps of most relevance to readers. A total of 1,355 civil appeals were transferred from the Supreme Court to the Court of Appeal on 28 October 2014. At the end of the second quarter of 2015 a total of 1,164 of those transferred appeals remained outstanding. Allied to this, at the end of the same quarter 282 additional civil appeals from the High Court were outstanding. From these early statistics it is clear that the Court of Appeal has a significant job of work to do in order to eliminate the undesirable phenomenon of lengthy waiting periods to have one’s appeal of a High Court decision determined. In October of this year appeals that were estimated to last a full day were being allocated dates for hearing in October of 2016.
It is clear that the Court of Appeal bears a heavy burden and will face many challenges in dealing with a significant and increasing workload.
This article is an abbreviated version of a paper presented by Matthew Austin to the Law Society of Ireland’s Annual Litigation Seminar in October 2015.
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About the Author
Matthew Austin
Matthew is a partner in the Commercial & Business team and has considerable expertise in a range of practice areas, having acted for Irish and International clients in domestic and multi-jurisdictional issues. Matthew has advised in civil and administrative law disputes and in regulatory and advisory matters including insolvency/restructuring, IP, defamation and media law, competition and consumer protection and data protection.