Digital court system works from ‘one source of truth’

The Courts Service’s digital transformation has accelerated significantly over the last three years and aims to be “an exemplar in Europe”, the body’s head of digital Mark Dunne told this year’s Law Society Family and Child Law conference 2025 (14 November). 

The system will comprise three elements:

• UCMS (Unified Case Management System) for staff,
• UCMS Judiciary – the system that judges and county registrars will use in the courtroom, and
• Portal for practitioners and lay litigants. 

Acknowledging the slow progress to date, Dunne explained that the process began from a “very low bar”. 

The system that was used in the High Court up until October 2023 was over 30 years old, and allowed access to 50 users in a staff of 120.

Across the Courts Service, over 150 separate case-management systems were in operation for 1,200 staff. 

Migrating data was challenging, but the main concern was security, Dunne explained.

Referencing the 2021 cyber-attack on the HSE, Dunne said: “A 30-year-old system is just a ticking time bomb.”

Contractors have been brought in to augment and support digitisation, but overall this is a civil-servant-led approach.

“We don't just bring in a consultancy firm and hand over the project,” Dunne explained.

'Adapt and change quickly'

“We're implementing it ourselves. That allows us to adapt and change quickly.”

The initial years of the transformation focused on strengthening infrastructure, modernising desktops, improving Wi-Fi in courtrooms, establishing secure cloud-first platforms, and recruiting specialist staff.

The process has involved working with global judiciaries to learn from their successes and mistakes, and stakeholder involvement has also been important.

“It's very much about getting things into people's hands early, getting them using it. What's not working, fix it, improve it and work on it together,” Dunne told the conference.

The first practical iteration was the jury summons portal in 2022, followed by Assisted Decision Making, and the replacement of the High Court’s 30-year-old system in 2023 and the replacement of all 27 Circuit Court family case-management systems.

Recent months have also seen the roll-out of the new system to Dolphin House, and the remaining District Court family systems are scheduled for migration throughout 2026.

The UCMS simplifies data.

Dunne described it as: “One source of truth. What you see is what we see.”

Future integration with other agencies has also been a consideration, and Dunne described recent integration with Revenue for probate as, “a game changer in terms of data entry, because we can just reuse the data that's already been entered in.” 

‘Revolutionary’

UCMS judiciary allows the judiciary or county registrars to access the case information digitally.

A pilot scheme has been in operation for some months, and Dunne said that it had been described by one judge as “revolutionary”. 

It will be rolled out across all jurisdictions where UCMS is in place from later this month, continuing throughout 2026.

Another key milestone was reached early this year with the signing off on the digital rules by all rules committees.

“The digital rules are there to allow us to do things like electronic filing, electronic signature, statements of truth, e-stamping of documents, and so on.”

These rules have been essential to unlocking the practitioner portal.

Automated notifications

The Circuit Family portal, piloted since April this year, allows practitioners to file electronically, receive automated notifications when filings issue or orders are perfected, track court dates in real time, and download perfected orders. 

A notable innovation is the ability to extract data directly from Word-based civil bills, reducing the need to manually retype information.

It also enables users to serve documents through the system and to sign civil bills and statements of truth digitally.

“Our plan is to ramp that up from early December and begin the nationwide rollout,” Dunne explained.

Of the statement of truth, which went live when the portal was introduced, Dunne pointed out that: “In Britain, a practitioner can sign the statement of truth on behalf of the clients. In Ireland, that's not the case.

Smooth rollout

“You need to get your client to sign the signatures through the portal. That was one area we thought we might run into some issues, but so far, it's gone relatively smoothly.” 

Registration processes are already in place, including identity verification and practice certificate validation for firms, and all users authenticate via password and two-factor authentication. 

As more firms register, support sessions will be scheduled to guide users through their first filings, collect feedback and refine the system.

Dunne finished by saying, “We're more than keen to engage with as many people as we possibly can, just to try and get this right.”