Talks to avert a strike that could close the High Court and Supreme Court offices have been arranged for next Tuesday. Court clerks are currently on a work-to-rule which is seriously disrupting a wide range of services, and have served strike notice for Wednesday. The dispute is over selection procedures to fill two posts.
The execution of wills, company liquidations, debt collection and property transactions are among the areas where lawyers, accountants and legal searchers are already experiencing delays because of the week-long work-to-rule. Thirty-two court clerks servicing the superior courts are refusing to use computers to access records, or to cover the workload of the two vacancies in dispute.
Conveyancing and probate are affected because court clerks are no longer using the computer system to assist legal searchers. People wishing to lodge judgments are also encountering delays.
All applications for court documents before 1997 are subject to at least a 24-hour delay, as they have to be ordered from the archives.
While the courts are still sitting and handing down decisions, many of these are inoperative because the processing of essential documentation, such as summonses, orders and reserved judgements, is being delayed by the court clerks reverting to "old technology".
For instance, awards for damages sent down by the High Court are no longer processed by computer, nor are decisions of the Master's Court in relation to lending agencies pursuing defaulting debtors.
At present the backlog of unprocessed documents is comparatively small, and many legal search agencies in Dublin are deferring all but the most urgent business, in the hope that the dispute will be resolved next week.
Traditionally court clerk vacancies in the superior courts division have been filled by seniority. The attempt to change the system to one based on written application and competitive interview has led to confrontation with the clerks' union, IMPACT.
According to IMPACT it was given assurances that proposed reforms in the court system would be on the basis of full consultation and negotiation. In this case, the union says, local management has acted unilaterally.