Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 March 2018
346. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Justice and Equality further to Parliamentary Question No. 179 of 8 March 2018 and in view of the fact that it has taken the Office of Wards of Court seven months to issue 350 statements, the timeframe for the issuing of all 2,500 statements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12475/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraAs the Deputy is aware, the High Court has jurisdiction in wards of court matters and management of the courts is the responsibility of the Courts Service, which is independent in exercising its functions under the Courts Service Act 1998.
However, in order to be of assistance to the Deputy, I have had enquiries made and the Courts Service has informed me that while the Office of Wards of Court commenced issuing statements to Committees of Wards of Court in late September 2017, the work in producing these statements is to a large degree a manual task involving records held in respect of each individual ward and this process is proving more time consuming than originally anticipated.
Given the nature of the systems in the Office of Wards of Court, involving individual paper files, the process of issuing individual fund statements to each of more than 2,500 cases is quite labour intensive. All data must be checked to ensure it is accurate and up to date and to avoid contravening data protection legislation. As the Deputy is aware, 350 statements have issued to date and the next batch of statements is to issue this month.
The Courts Service remains committed to providing all such statements over the coming months and has informed me that it is intended that these statements will have issued to all Committees of Wards of Court by the end of August 2018. The Wards of Court Office continue to provide individual detailed financial statements when requested by Committees of Wards of Court.
