Sir, – With all the brouhaha regarding the proposed judicial pay referendum, it strikes me that valuable time is being used on something which is actually going to make a minimal financial difference, whatever the outcome. If the Government is insistent on tinkering with our courts in the name of progress, would we not be better served by a referendum on the creation of a court of civil appeal? This would be much less contentious, and would go a long way towards clearing the staggering (and growing) backlog of cases on appeal to the Supreme Court. Unless, of course, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter’s agitation is not so much in the name of “progress” as “optics”? – Yours, etc,