The centralised Jury Summons Office in Castlebar, Co Mayo, has now issued 420,000 jury summonses over the past two years.

The jury-summons-reply process will also migrate to a digital platform in 2022.

The Castlebar office has brought in economies of scale in the jury-summons system, the Courts Service has said.

Castlebar is also the site of the newly-centralised Legal Aid Panel, which allows solicitors to apply to be placed on the Legal Aid Panel in any county, using a single application form.

The drive to centralise these court-office functions followed a review across 50 offices in 2017.

Functions

“We centralised these functions in Castlebar and not in the capital, in line with the wishes expressed by the staff in a consultation process, in pursuing Government policies regarding regional balance, and in light of our analysis regarding the availability of space with a scope for extension,” a Courts Service spokesman said.

The Castlebar unit is also a receiving-and-transmitting agency for EU documents in cases where one of the parties is based in another EU member state.

It provides a single point of contact for queries and, in particular, allows prioritising of urgent childcare applications.