Dame Siobhan appeared at a meeting of the Stormont<\/a> Justice Committee when it sat in the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday.<\/p>\n She told MLAs that she understood why people were \u201cexercised\u201d by delays in their cases being dealt with.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cThere are consequences for everyone, not least those who are within the criminal justice process, and the victims of crime and their families are people who just cannot understand why their cases are taking too long.<\/p>\n \u201cDelay impacts upon defendants as well.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat it can come down to is a lack of fairness potentially being argued in a case because it\u2019s gone on so long, it can increase costs\u2026. and there\u2019s a danger that can diminish public confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Dame Siobhan insisted that the courts system was working but said it \u201ccould be better\u201d.<\/p>\n She said she believed the judiciary was in a \u201cgood place\u201d last year to deal with a backlog of cases, but things had \u201cgone a little bit backwards\u201d since then.<\/p>\n Criminal barristers in Northern Ireland started strike action this month in a long-running dispute over the fees paid for legal aid work.<\/p>\n The escalated action has effectively halted crown court cases involving those who require legal aid.<\/p>\n The Lady Chief Justice said there were currently 62% more defendants before the courts than in March 2020, and that judges were having to deal with more a higher number of more complex cases.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cWe have the legal profession, who are in a position where they\u2019re saying their remuneration for these more difficult cases needs to be looked at.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s compounding the issue and I\u2019m very worried about that because it compounds the delay that we have in the system that we\u2019ve been trying to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n She added: \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough courts, we don\u2019t have enough crown courts.<\/p>\n \u201cI have successfully argued that we should have 15 crown courts operating, that was an increase from 13.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019ve said, if you give me 17 I can really make more of an inroad into crown court cases.<\/p>\n \u201cI need more judges to deal with crown court cases.\u201d<\/p>\n Dame Siobhan said court delays in Northern Ireland are \u201cnot at the same level\u201d as in England and Wales.<\/p>\n She said: \u201cTheir delay, their crown court backlog, is over 79,000, they\u2019re not listing cases until 2030.<\/p>\n Dame Siobhan said in Northern Ireland, cases are still being listed within this year.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cBut if we continue to have a paralysis in the crown courts operating, I\u2019m worried about that being pushed back, and I\u2019m worried about how we pick that up, and victims are rightly annoyed and making their case about this.<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern is to keep courts operating and to maintain public confidence in our courts.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not part of the Department (of Justice) or the bar or the solicitors, but I\u2019ve staked my claim that they need to talk and sort the dispute out sooner rather than later.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland\u2019s most senior judge has urged all sides to have talks to resolve a strike by barristers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[188,21336,7898,1144,16,15],"class_list":["post-715635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-crime","tag-doj","tag-justice","tag-northern-ireland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115945239042649932","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"US](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769183832_644_T6FTMCAL6VKGZD3MZH4VEKOHZI.jpg\")
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Dame Siobhan Keegan, Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. (Liam McBurney\/PA) <\/p>\n