Data across the European Union should also become more interoperable and transparent. Specific improvements to data collection and availability that should be prioritised are:

Average Case Disposition Time

1. The Courts Service should record and publish the average length of court proceedings (disposition times) for all courts and for all matter types.

2. The Courts Service should share data with the Council of Europe to enable the calculation of estimated disposition times for comparative purposes.

Crime-Detection Rates

3. An Garda Síochána should separately report detection rates for historical crime incidents and contemporary crime incidents.

4. The CSO should separately publish detection rates for historical crime incidents, and contemporary crime incidents.

Case Clearance Rates

5. The Courts Service should report the number of civil cases settled each year to enable a more accurate assessment of case clearance rates.

6. The Courts Service should disaggregate administrative cases from civil cases in its reporting.

7. The Courts Service should record and publish the extent of the case backlog at each court level on an annual basis.

8. The Courts Service should record and publish the ‘age’ of the backlogged case load in the Irish courts each year.

9. The Courts Service should include a breakdown of the number of judges in each court in its annual reports.

Caseload Per Judge

10. The Courts Service should publish the number of sitting days of each court to enable a more accurate calculation of judges’ caseloads.

11. The Council of Europe should expand the scope of CEPEJ (European Commission for the Effi ciency of Justice) Evaluation Reports to include caseloads per judge and enable comparison across Member States.

Court Expenditure

12. The Courts Service should follow the Council of Europe (CEPEJ) reporting guidelines and include judicial salaries when reporting the annual public budget allocated to the functioning of the courts.

Number of Gardaí

13. Eurostat should ensure that its own definition of ‘police officers’ is consistently applied when publishing policing figures for EU Member States.

14. An Garda Síochána should record and publish the number of resignations and retirements from, and appointments to, the service each year.

Trust and Confidence in the Justice System

15. The Council of Europe should expand the scope in its annual SPACE reports (the Council of Europe’s Annual Penal Statistics) to include indicators on public trust in prison systems.

16. The Department of Justice, in collaboration with the Irish Prison Service, should introduce data-collection mechanisms to measure public and stakeholder confidence in the effectiveness of the prison system.