REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE CRIMINAL COURTS OF JUSTICE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE CRIMINAL COURTS OF JUSTICE CRIMINAL COURTS COMPLEX, DUBLIN 8
A dhaoine uaisle, is onóir dom an cuireadh ó Bhord na Seirbhíse Cúirteanna chun feidhmiú anseo inniu agus ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghlacadh leis an Phríomh-Bhreitheamh as an fháilte chroíúil a chuir sé romham.
Lord Mayor, Chief Justice, Minister[s], members of the judiciary, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured by the invitation from the Courts Service Board to officiate here today and wish to thank the Chief Justice for his warm words of welcome. I am delighted to be here today not only to open these wonderful courts but also to welcome you as my newest neighbours!
As a neighbour with a keen interest, I have watched this impressive building rise – very rapidly – here where Dublin city and the Phoenix Park intersect but it was impossible to appreciate its full splendor and character until I entered the Great Hall today. Truly the architect Peter McGovern and the team at Henry J Lyons have created a twenty-first century seat of justice to more than rival Cooley and Gandon’s more familiar and more sombre edifice further down the Liffey. Given its circular shape it is hardly surprising that already it should have been dubbed the Pantheon but since it is not a dwelling place of the gods, nor the home of our nation’s illustrious dead nor a place of public entertainment the informal title is more honorific than anything else but an early sign of the respect and admiration this building has already garnered. This was until recently a rather unprepossessing corner of Dublin, a place you passed on the way to that other great neighbour of mine - Dublin Zoo. Now the cityscape has been radically altered with the firm, confident imprint of twenty-first century Ireland. Altered too is the way in which justice is administered and experienced for the culture within the building is both user sensitive and technologically sophisticated to the highest levels of excellence.
Gandon and Cooley’s historic Four Courts building in its day over two hundred years ago replaced not just a site of mouldering dereliction with a grand new building but heralded profound changes in the delivery of justice. This building is set to do the same.
Over the last decade there has been tremendous and much-needed investment in modernising and sympathetically refurbishing many courthouses around the country. But the capital had not kept pace and indeed the already ageing facilities were showing visible signs of stress from overuse and lack of space. For many of those who used those buildings the experience was far from pleasant or empathetic. That cannot be said of this building for it was designed to show respect and sensitivity to the full range of users of this building, from the staff who will be here road-testing it day in and day out, to the victims and witnesses who need privacy, to the public and the media whose access to this place is a bulwark of our system of justice, to the curious child who visits it once in the company of a fraught and worried parent.
Mercifully, the Chief Justice had pity on me and did not insist on showing me each of the 450 rooms but I know that the building in its design and in the daily lived experience that it is intended will be rolled out here, is about the business of ensuring that all who enter here are consciously treated with dignity and respect, their needs thought through and met to the fullest extent possible.
What happens here is of huge importance to our democracy. The building exists to create the best context in which to secure, safeguard and vindicate the good of the people, the values we live by and the laws by which we order our shared lives. The justice that is encountered here will graphically reveal our character and our values. That same, sure, credible justice prevails whether it is administered in a shack with a two bar heater or in a building such as this with its formidably high levels of care, generosity, imagination, creativity, comfort and technology. But by investing in such a building, by insisting that it must be the very best not simply to look at but to work in and to be in for all users whether judges or judged, that tells us a lot about our character and our values and what it says augurs well for Ireland. This is a building to be proud of and a showcase of a culture of inclusion to be proud of.
It is a great pleasure for me to declare these Criminal Courts of Justice officially open.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.