The latest annual report from the Courts Service shows a rise in the number of murder trials and in the numbers seeking divorces. They also show a slight fall in personal injuries cases. Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent, reports.
These were among the statistics included in the service's annual report for 2002, published yesterday.
The Courts Service had an annual budget last year of €87 million. It collected €69 million in fines and assorted fees. The service also administers €800 million in funds, mainly for wards of court. The management of these funds was reorganised last year.
The figures showed that the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal, dealt with 324 appeals last year, up from 243 the year before.
The High Court deals with a wide range of matters, from personal injuries to divorce (where big money is involved), company law matters to judicial reviews, and including rape and murder in the Central Criminal Court.
The number of personal injury cases in this court fell from 10,744 in 2001 to 10,297 last year, but this is too small a drop to attribute to increased publicity about fraudulent claims.
In 35 per cent of cases the award was less than €38,000, but the biggest proportion of awards, 45 per cent, was between this and €100,000.
There were 55 murder trials in the Central Criminal Court in 2002, a huge increase on the 2001 figure of 31. Excluding the guilty pleas, where there was no trial only sentencing, 28 of the 55 went to trial, of which 16 were convicted of murder and 11 of manslaughter. There were no acquittals; in the final case the jury disagreed.
The number of cases in the Special Criminal Court continued to fall, with 13 trials there last year, compared with 18 the previous year and 26 in 2000.
The bulk of criminal trials takes place in the Circuit Court, where there were 13,035 criminal matters dealt with last year, a slight fall on 2001. This accounted for 23 per cent of all Circuit Court business. Two-thirds of this court business is in the civil area, with 9 per cent being family law and 1 per cent licensing.
In family law, there was a further increase in the number of divorce applications, up to 3,912 from 3,459 in 2001.
Of these, 2,571 were granted and two refused, with the remainder awaiting a hearing at the beginning of 2003. Judicial separation applications also show an increase, from 1,845 to 1,871. There were 52 nullity applications.
People must be separated for a minimum of four years before applying for a divorce. Many separating couples seek a judicial separation first, where such a wait is not necessary, in order to sort out matters such as the family home, maintenance and custody of children.
The District Court is the busiest of the four courts and dealt with 615,058 matters in 2002, a slight fall from the 2001 figure of 647,906. The bulk of this was criminal business, with 418,735 criminal matters coming before various district courts in 2002.
It also dealt with 96,378 licensing applications, 23,316 family law matters (usually barring and protection orders and maintenance) and 76,629 civil matters.