Court of Appeal to be ‘overwhelmed’ unless Government acts

However, he also said he was “confident, despite the many other demands on State resources, the Government will put effective measures in place to deal with these problems as soon as practicable”.

Mr Justice Ryan said year-long delays for most appeal hearings in the court, which was set up in 2014 to address the backlog in the Supreme Court, will get worse unless serious action is taken.

The court has addressed around a thousand of the 1,650 appeals it inherited from the Supreme Court and Mr Justice Ryan expects that around 60 per cent of the remaining 650 will go forward.

However, the court can only deal with around 320 appeals per year.

In a public statement, Mr Justice Ryan said: “It is well-known, despite the best efforts of an extremely talented and dedicated team, this court is not only being outpaced by the inflow of appeals from the High Court in civil matters but is coming to the point of being overwhelmed.

“The result unfortunately is an ever-lengthening list of cases seeking dates for hearing and schedules being arranged far into the future.”

He added that it was “encouraging” that the Chief Justice of Ireland, Mr Justice Frank Clarke, had offered some of the resources of the Supreme Court to assist in hearing some of the legacy appeals.