Departmental Legal Cases

Tuesday, 26 July 2022

Questions (1532)

Peadar Tóibín

Question:

1532. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Justice the number of legal cases brought against her Department in each of the past ten years and to date in 2022; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39995/22]

View answer

Written answers

Minister for Justice

It has not been possible to collate the information requested by the Deputy in the time allowed. I will write to the Deputy to provide this information as soon as it is available.

The following deferred reply was received under Standing Order 51

I refer to your Parliamentary Question No. 1532 to my Department, which was for answer on 26 July 2022, and in which you requested the number of legal cases brought against my Department in each of the past ten years and to date in 2022; and if I will make a statement on the matter.

As you will recall, the information you requested could not be obtained in the time available and I undertook to contact you again once the information was collated.

My Department is working hard at improving its data collection, however, it does not have complete information to hand for the last ten years as requested. To retrospectively provide this information for the ten year period requested would require a disproportionate amount of staff time and resources, and would be extremely onerous to compile.

Set out below is information in relation to cases handled by the State Claims Agency for the last ten years and an update on the figures provided to you in October 2021 regarding cases handled by the Chief State Solicitor’s Office.

The State Claims Agency manages certain types of personal injury and property damage involving the Department of Justice. The Chief State Solicitor’s Office handles other litigation involving the Department including personal injury actions not delegated to the State Claims Agency, commercial, constitutional, administrative and employment litigation involving the Department. Both bodies have reverted with basic statistical information.

State Claims Agency

2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022 (to end June)
9	8	10	9	13	15	10	9	6	7	4

The above table relates to claims against the Department of Justice and shows the number of cases received in each of the years 2012 to the end of June 2022.

Chief State Solicitor’s Office

2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022 (to end September)
1,466	1,569	1,582	1,575	1,395	902	538

In relation to the table of cases being handled by the Chief State Solicitor’s Office, best endeavours have been made to exclude files where the transactional or advisory files involve the Department or where the Department is bringing the proceedings. It is not possible to be definitive in that regard without reviewing each individual file, which is not feasible at this time. The figures provided above show the number of new cases received in each of the years 2016 to date.