The President of the High Court has announced updated arrangements for listing matters in provincial venues, effective from 28 April 2025.
1. Personal and fatal injuries actions in provincial venues
The callover for each provincial personal injuries sessions will be taken by Mr Justice Tony O’Connor on dates published in the Legal Diary.
At those callovers, parties should provide the following supplementary information to the Court:
- The date of accrual of the cause or causes of action in the proceedings.
- The actual or expected dates of compliance by all parties with Order 39, rule 46 of the Rules of the Superior Courts (RSC).
- The expected duration of trial.
- Whether the hearing will be an assessment of damages only.
- Whether VMR facilities for an expert or other witness may be required at trial.
- Details of when and where any outstanding motions in the proceedings are listed, so that they may be re-listed for hearing before or during the sessions.
The notice published for each callover may specify a cut-off point for proceedings which may not get a trial date at the next sessions; those cases will automatically be listed for the following sessions.
Proceedings which are not ready to proceed in the sessions following the callover will be adjourned generally with liberty to re-enter.
Cases in which there is no attendance at the callover may be adjourned generally with liberty to re-enter, or have the notice of trial struck out, at the discretion of the Court.
Re-entering proceedings adjourned generally
To re-enter proceedings for trial which have been adjourned generally, the party seeking to re-enter should:
- Email [email protected], clearly confirming which parties have consented or have not consented to the re-entry.
- Ensure the email is received not later than 10 days before the callover for the relevant sessions.
Papers for hearings in personal injuries actions can be handed up to Court on the day of the hearing.
2. Non-jury, judicial review and chancery matters in provincial venues
Hearings in proceedings from the above lists may be transferred to the provincial sessions by the judge in charge of those lists (subject to list capacity at the relevant sessions and to the discretion of the judge in charge of those lists).
Practitioners are encouraged to identify cases from those lists which would be suitable to be heard during the provincial sessions and to apply for those cases to be so transferred. This applies to both trials and motions/applications.
Once transferred into a provincial sessions:
- The proceedings will be included in the callover for those provincial sessions.
- At that callover, the parties should clarify whether the estimate for the duration of the hearing remains as previously notified and whether there are outstanding directions to be complied with.
- Once allocated a date for hearing at the provincial sessions, the papers for hearings in non-jury, judicial review and chancery matters so transferred must be lodged in soft copy by email to [email protected] by 4pm on the Tuesday of the week preceding the hearing date at the relevant provincial sessions.
- All written submissions prepared in compliance with directions given must be flagged and included in the soft-copy booklets. Hard copies of papers already lodged in soft copy together with relevant authorities should be available to be handed into the Court on the day of the hearing.
3. Cork non-jury, judicial review and chancery matters
Non-jury, judicial review and chancery matters will continue to be heard in the special sittings fixed each term for Cork. The existing arrangements in respect of such matters will continue to apply. Those matters are the subject of a dedicated callover list.
Practitioners are also encouraged to identify cases from these lists which would be suitable to be heard in Cork during the Cork sittings and to make applications for such cases to be heard in Cork to the judges in charge of the lists.
