The amount of funding allocated to the Irish courts would only keep our health service running for about three and half days. While the health service is literally a matter of life and death, the operation of the courts and the wider justice system is fundamental to understanding the health of the society we live in. A trustworthy and effective justice system is a cornerstone of any democracy, protects individual rights and is vital to the running of a modern economy.
Of course, we can only judge the health of the justice system with evidence. If we don’t have the facts, we’re simply offering opinions without substance. A new Justice Indicators report, which is published today by the Law Society’s Centre for Justice and Law Reform, demonstrates how core pillars of justice are performing compared with other jurisdictions. The report evaluates the resourcing, effectiveness and efficiency of the Irish justice system across four critical areas: trust, policing, courts and prisons.
Some of the findings are positive. Ireland’s homicide rate is 38 per cent lower than the EU average and public trust in the Irish judiciary and the courts is 27 per cent higher than the OECD average. While trust is an abstract concept, it is relevant to an assessment of whether justice is “working”. Public perceptions of fairness can have an impact on people’s willingness to report crime, engage with the courts or abide by the law. This can, in turn, affect measurable outcomes, including the number of reported crime incidents and the number of matters brought before the courts.
Some of the findings are less positive – and, in some cases, quite stark. Ireland has the lowest number of judges per capita in Europe. Court cases here take far longer than they do in other Council of Europe member states, while our rate of sexual offences is 43 per cent higher than the EU average.
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What is immediately clear from the findings is not only how much we can learn from the data that exists, but how much we still do not know.
Take the courts. Case disposition times, which refer to the length of time it takes for a specific case to be resolved, are considerably longer in Ireland. The latest comparative data show that it is taking people in Ireland three times longer to have their legal issues resolved than it takes those living in other European countries: 541 days (18 months) versus 168 days (six months).
The Irish average (541 days) excludes civil cases in the District and Circuit courts. There has been no data available from these courts since 2020 on civil cases, whereas we do have this data for criminal cases. There is no transparency for prospective court users on court delays prior to initiating proceedings – information that would help them to plan realistically, reduce uncertainty in respect of waiting times and make informed decisions about whether and when to pursue legal action. How can policymakers determine whether, or where, more resourcing is needed without this information?
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The average prison sentence served in Ireland is lower than the average across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. The average sentence served in Ireland between 2019 and 2023 ranged from five to seven months, while the European benchmark was between 10 and 12 months. Ireland does not systematically collect or publish the data needed to understand why this is the case.
We cannot tell from the available data whether shorter sentences reflect effective rehabilitation, greater leniency for serious offending or early release pressures caused by overcrowding.
We don’t know if we are overusing imprisonment for lower‑level offences where alternatives such as electronic monitoring or community service might be more appropriate. Without consistent, detailed data, it is impossible to determine which of these factors is at play, how they interact, or where reform efforts should be directed.
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While crime detection rates are published, the figures combine historic and contemporary cases, making it difficult to understand current investigative performance. This is particularly relevant for sexual offences, given the increase in reporting of historic cases in recent years. Though called historic because the offences took place some years ago, they continue to constitute a crime and a harm. An increase in reports of historic sexual offences can lower overall detection rates, even when gardaí are improving in real time. Distinguishing between historic and current cases would provide a more accurate picture of present‑day issues and performance as well as helping identify where change is needed. This also matters for victims, as a low overall detection rate may discourage some from reporting incidents or from remaining engaged with the investigative process.
These data gaps matter. They constrain policy decisions, influence budget allocations and narrow the terms of public debate. They affect litigants and victims waiting for cases to progress, families navigating the courts, gardaí managing caseloads, and the Irish Prison Service preparing for admissions and releases. They also limit accountability. A justice system cannot be transparent if it cannot be measured.
The Justice Indicators paper sets out a series of practical recommendations to address long-standing information gaps. Its recommendations include publishing average case duration across all courts; reporting backlog size and age annually; disaggregating administrative cases from civil cases; separating historic and contemporary detection rates; standardising police number data reporting; and reintroducing systematic measurement of trust in the prison system. These are not radical proposals. They are the basic building blocks of a modern justice data infrastructure.
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Without accurate information, reforms risk being misdirected, ineffective, or inefficient. Without transparency, public trust erodes. Without interoperability, each part of the system operates in isolation, unable to see the pressures or consequences created elsewhere.
Ireland must build a justice system that is not only fair and effective, but also genuinely evidence driven. We cannot fix what we cannot measure.
Mark Garrett is director general of the Law Society of Ireland
