MILLIONS COULD be saved by both businesses and the State if mediation was used instead of litigation, according to the president of the Mediation Institute of Ireland.
Ireland was the second most costly place for civil litigation in a European survey, it was stated.
Addressing the institute’s annual conference, Karen Erwin said she calculated that €1.3 billion was spent on legal costs in civil litigation last year, up from €1.2 billion in 2009.
She said she estimated this based on figures from the 2010 Courts Service annual report for the costs awarded against the losing party when a case went to court.
She then doubled it to include the losing side’s costs, and multiplied the resulting figure again by 10 to reflect the fact that 90 per cent of cases are settled.
Ms Erwin pointed out that 70,000 civil cases were filed in the High and Circuit courts last year.
According to a report on mediation and the legal system in 26 countries from the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs, it takes on average of 515 days in Ireland from when a plaintiff files a law suit until the enforcement of the judgment. The quickest was Lithuania, taking 275 days.
This survey examined the costs and time spent in litigation in 26 member states, and found that legal costs were cheapest in Luxembourg, at 9.7 per cent of the value of the claim.
They were most expensive in the Czech Republic, at 33 per cent, with Ireland not far behind, with legal costs representing 26.7 per cent of the claim’s value.
The survey found that if disputes were dealt with under a two-step model – an attempt at mediation first, followed by court if that failed – mediation would have to succeed in 4 per cent of cases in Italy for time to start being saved, and 9 per cent in Belgium.
To start making cost savings, mediation would have to succeed in 28 per cent of cases in Italy and in 44 per cent of cases in Belgium.
Ms Erwin said that mediation succeeds in 80 per cent of cases.
Given that the State is party to between 40 and 50 per cent of civil litigation in Ireland, it could make a marked difference to the dispute resolution landscape by using mediation, Ms Erwin said.
Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness, former president of the Law Reform Commission, said the commission’s report on alternative dispute resolution, published last year, focused on mediation and had prepared a draft Bill, currently with the Government.
The confidentiality of the mediation process was important in embedding mediation in the legal system, she said.