‘Back to drawing board’ on civil-reform bill
FLAC (Free Legal Aid Centres) has welcomed a report from an Oireachtas committee on the Government’s proposals for civil-law reform.
The Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration’s report on pre-legislative scrutiny of the General Scheme of the Civil Reform Bill 2025, published last week, calls on the Government to give “further consideration” to the whole proposal.
The bill places judicial review on a statutory footing and proposes new rules for the discovery process and increases in the monetary limits on the jurisdiction of the Circuit and District Courts.
International agreements
In its report, the committee expresses concern that the proposals go beyond the recommendations made in the Kelly Report, while it also “has concerns in relation to its compatibility with international agreements, EU law, and the Constitution”.
It also states that proposed changes to judicial review are “not informed by data”
Appearing before the committee in March, FLAC argued that the proposed legislation would “radically limit” access to judicial review and would have a disproportionately negative impact on the people that it represents.
FLAC said that the committee’s report had now effectively called for the bill to be overhauled.
‘Serious flaws’
Chief executive Eilis Barry said that the committee had highlighted “serious flaws” with the general scheme, as well as the lack of data and evidence to support the proposals.
“It is quite clear that the Minister and his department need to go back to the drawing board before proceeding with changes to judicial review,” she stated.
Barry said that the draft bill had been published before any consultation with stakeholders and without any explanation of the policy rationale for the changes it proposed.
She called for the bill to be paused while further consultation, research, and data analysis was carried out.