Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 3 Mar 1998

Vol. 488 No. 1

Written Answers - Judicial Orders.

Alan Shatter

Ceist:

233 Mr. Shatter asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform whether he is in a position to provide Deputy Shatter with the information sought in Parliamentary Questions Nos. 293 to 300 of 9 December 1997 in relation to applications to courts. [5510/98]

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

The information requested in so far as it is available follows. The outstanding information requested by the Deputy will be forwarded to him as soon as possible.

With reference to Question No. 296 relating to applications made pursuant to the Domestic Violence Act 1996 the information requested is set out in the following table.

Applications dealt with by the District Court in the legal year ending 31 July 1997.

Applications for	Number of applications dealt with	Number of orders granted
Protection Order	5,434	4,884
Safety Order	1,997	982
Barring Order	5,217	2,135
Interim Barring Order	752	704

* Note: Figures are provisional.

With reference to Question No. 297 the number of applications dealt with in the District Courts pursuant to Family Law Maintenance Acts in the legal year ending 31 July 1997 is 3,724.

A breakdown of this figure, indicating the number of orders made and whether granted to a spouse or an unmarried parent, is not available at this time and will be forwarded to the Deputy as soon as the collation of same has been completed.

With reference to Question No. 298, set out on the table following are the number of applications made and orders granted in the District Courts under the Child Care Act, 1991 in relation to care orders and supervision orders in respect of the legal year ending 31 July 1997, which is the first year for which statistics were collated regarding the Child Care Act. Figures are not available relating to the number of emergency or interim orders.

The statistics provided in this table supercede the statistics I already provided in this regard to the Deputy in response to his similar Dáil question of 29 January 1998.

When interpreting these statistics the Deputy should be aware that when an application for a care order is made on behalf of a number of children in the same family, some offices count each child in the family concerned as being the subject of a separate care application-order while other offices, i.e. Dublin, only count multi-child applications as one application-order.

Such discrepancies in the basis of counting statistics will be overcome when a networked I.T. system is installed in all District Court offices.

Child Care Act 1991.

Office	Supervision Orders 1997	Care Orders 1997
Applications	Granted	Applications	Granted
Athlone	–	–	1	1
Ballina	–	–	2	2
Ballinasloe	2	2	5	5
Bandon	1	1	2	2
Bray	–	–	65	53
Carlow	10	10	–	–
Carrick-on-Shannon	–	–	–	–
Castlebar	10	10	53	48
Cavan	2	2	10	10
Clonmel	3	3	22	22
Cork	15	15	26	26
Derrynea	–	–	–	–
Donegal	–	–	–	–
Drogheda	–	–	13	10
Dundalk	1	1	7	7
Ennis	16	16	37	37
Fermoy	3	3	6	6
Galway	10	9	16	14
Gorey	–	–	26	26
Kilkenny	–	–	18	18
Killarney	–	–	2	2
Letterkenny	–	–	55	54
Limerick	26	19	36	25
Listowel	–	–	14	6
Longford	–	–	8	7
Loughrea	9	9	8	–
Mallow	8	8	15	15
Monaghan	–	–	–	–
Mullingar	1	1	2	2
Naas	–	–	14	14
Nenagh	1	1	1	1
Portlaoise	3	3	12	12
Roscommon	–	–	3	3
Sligo	7	7	21	21
Thurles	3	3	–	–
Tralee	8	7	28	27
Trim	–	–	22	22
Tuam	–	–	–	–
Tullamore	1	1	4	4
Waterford	5	5	2	2
Wexford	4	4	17	17
Youghal	12	8	29	29
DMD	Not available	1	115 (to be confirmed)	115
Total	161	149	717	665

With reference to Question Nos. 299 and 300 of 9 December 1997 the number of applications dealt with in the District Court under the Guardianship of Infants Act, 1964 during the legal year ending 31 July 1997 is 4,457.

A breakdown of this figure, indicating the number of orders made, and whether the orders were for custody or access, or both, or by parents married to each other or not, is not available at this time, and same will be forwarded to the Deputy as soon as the collation of same is completed.