Legislation To Reform Family Courts System Passed.

• The Family Courts Bill is a key element of the programme of reform to make family justice processes safer, cheaper, more efficient and less adversarial.
• Judges to be assigned on a full-time basis to the Family Court divisions.
• Best interests of the child will be a primary consideration in the conduct of all family law proceedings.

Today, November 7th, 2024, the Family Courts Bill 2022 passed through both Houses of the Oireachtas. Once enacted, the legislation will provide for the establishment of family court divisions within the existing court structures, a Family High Court, a Family Circuit Court, and a Family District Court.
Judges who have specialist training or experience in dealing with family law matters will be assigned to the Family Courts divisions on a full-time basis.

Key reforms contained in the Bill include:

• The establishment of a Family Court as divisions within the existing court structures.
• The assigning of judges on a full-time basis to the Family Court divisions – judges who, by reason of their training or experience, are suitable to deal with matters of family law.
• The creation of new positions of Principal Judge of the Family High Court, Family Circuit Court, and Family District Court to ensure proper and effective management of these Courts.
• A requirement for ongoing professional training in the area of family law for judges.
• Allowing for joint applications to be made for judicial separation, divorce, and dissolution of civil partnership, and supporting mediation and alternative dispute resolution in such cases.
• The setting out of guiding principles for the conduct of family law proceedings, which are directed at ensuring the best interests of the child are a primary consideration, encouraging mediation – where appropriate – and that as far as possible proceedings are accessible and user friendly.

The Bill also provides for a greater proportion of non-contentious family law matters to be dealt with at Family District Court level, in order to provide local access to the court system and to enable family law issues to be resolved in the simplest and most cost-efficient way, reducing the stress faced by litigants in such cases.

The Family Courts Bill is a key component in the ongoing implementation of the Family Justice Strategy, which is driving reforms to create a more efficient and user-friendly family justice system that puts the family and children at the centre of its work.

This includes:

1. Ensuring the voice of the child is heard in family law proceedings, in line with a child’s constitutional right, and developing new ways to ensure that this right is upheld. This includes an allocation of €3 million to develop a children’s Court Advocate Pilot Project, and a pilot scheme to fund welfare and voice of the child reports;
2. Supporting the Judiciary to develop a set of guidelines for the use of welfare reports in family law proceedings;
3. Reviewing training options across the family justice sector, identifying gaps and opportunities for new provisions;
4. Improving information provisions for all those accessing the system, including children and young people;
5. Developing options to provide alternatives to court, including the development of a set of child maintenance guidelines and expansion of the Family Mediation Service through the Legal Aid Board’s private panel of family mediators;
6. Commissioning research on the operation of the In Camera rule, a draft of which the Minister expects to receive shortly.