High Court judge backs continued roll-out of remote hearings

High Court judge backs continued roll-out of remote hearings

More remote hearings should take place in the High Court as “a way of tiding us over until we get back to physical hearings”, a senior judge has said.

Mr Justice David Barniville, a High Court judge and president of the Association of Judges of Ireland (AJI), told The Irish Times that the technology should be more widely used over the coming weeks.

The first remote hearings in the High Court and the Circuit Court were held last week, following the beginning of remote hearings in the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal a week earlier.

Mr Justice Barniville said the remote Commercial Court hearings he presided over last week, with solicitors and barristers for the two parties participating from home, had “worked fine”.

However, he said remote hearings were still flawed in comparison to physical hearings, highlighting the difficulty in seeing different lawyers’ reactions to submissions and concerns about people treating hearings “with the same degree of seriousness” as in a courtroom.

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