The pandemic led to a significant reduction in the business conducted by the courts system last year, the latest annual report from theHowever, while some types of dispute were less common, such as repossession cases and employment law cases, other types, including divorce and serious crime cases, showed an increase despite the overall trend for 2020.
The number of new cases for all courts during 2020 was 162,980, a significant fall on the 232,958 new cases in 2019. The Circuit Criminal Courts received 18,275 new cases last year – an increase of 11 per cent on 2019 and an increase in serious crime of 31 per cent over four years. There was a 10 per cent increase in applications for safety orders, to 8,887, and an eight per cent increase in applications protection orders, to 7,649.
There was a 29 per cent increase in the number of applications for divorce made in 2020, to 5,266, with three quarters of the applicants being wives.High Court applications from creditors to have people declared bankrupt fell sharply in 2020 by 77 per cent, but with the bankruptcy court now sitting remotely, the “early indications so far in 2021 are that applications are returning to normal levels”, according to the report.