European Court of Justice facing workload challenge

The European Court of Justice is facing a challenging increase in work-load, Supreme Court judge Mr Justice Nial Fennelly has said.

The court is handling some 700 cases annually, including a “record” 450 references for preliminary ruling, Mr Justice Fennelly said in Galway tonight.

He was addressing NUI Galway (NUIG) law school's annual distinguished lecture, which was attended by Attorney-General Máire Whelan.

Mr Justice Fennelly, who was appointed by the Government earlier this week to chair the Commission of Investigation into the taping of telephone calls at Garda stations, was formerly Advocate General at the EU’s Court of Justice.

In his opening remarks, Prof Donncha O’Connell, head of NUIG’s school of law, said that Mr Justice Fennelly would not talk about the commission of investigation, no matter what questions were asked or how they were phrased.

“A typical national supreme court, whether it be the supreme court of the United States, the United Kingdom or Ireland, delivers judgment in less than 100 cases per annum,” he said.

“Over the five years from 2009 to 2013, the number of new cases received by the (European) Court increased from 562 to 699, an increase of 24 per cent in five years,” he noted.

It was to the court’s credit that it answered references for preliminary ruling in an average time of 16.6 months, he said, and was “remarkable”, given the time required for translation.

The number of references made annually by the Irish courts has increased significantly in recent year, he said, with seven in 2011 and six in 2012.

As an example, last April's Sweetman and others v An Bord Pleanála judgment on the Galway by-pass case, referred to it by the Supreme Court, ruled that almost one and a half hectares of karstic limestone landscape in the Lough Corrib special area of conservation had to be protected.

This represented a “huge success for the environmental campaigners who had brought the case”, and was one example of the “expanding force and importance of EU law”, he said.

Responding to Mr Justice Fennelly, NUIG European law lecturer Anna-Louise Hinds emphasised the role of the national judge as “hero” in contributing to development, enforcement and effectiveness of EU law. This could not have been predicted by the drafters of the Treaty of Rome, she said.

“The decentralisation of judicial power in the union by the Court of Justice has been genius. It seems clear from what Mr Justice Fennelly discussed that this decentralisation has been the lifeblood of union law,” she said.