Code of Organization and Civil Procedure (Amendment of Schedule A) Regulations, 2020
By virtue of this subsidiary legislation, published on the 3 April 2020, the Minister responsible for Justice, has amended the Tariffs applicable for the opening of the registry of the courts in certain instances.
That legal notice simply revises the fees that are payable to the registry if one were to open the registry outside normal business hours, only in the case of the matters captured by paragraph 1 (a) and (c) of Tariff A, as repeated in each of Tariffs B and D.
To avoid misunderstandings the registry remains subject to an order of closure, as are the courts. The captioned legal notice does not change that current state of affairs, accordingly the registry of the courts can only be opened if the matter is considered to satisfy the requirements of urgency or the public interest as required by Subsidiary legislation 465.17, with the difference that in the cases mentioned in the LN, the cost for opening of the registry is being reduced in view of the nature of most of those cases.
This does not mean and indeed should not be construed as meaning that for all the cases mentioned in paragraph 1(a) and (c) of Tariff A, the registry is open, it is not. Indeed, there are some cases which are captured by the LN that can, of their nature, hardly be considered as urgent, whilst others, such as certain issues in child custody, for instance, are of their very nature urgent. It is the court that will in each case determine whether the matter is one of urgency or otherwise.
Advocates should therefore exercise extreme care in applying the provisions of this latest legal notice and should apply it in the manner in which it is intended, namely that it still regulates a situation where the court registry is closed and can only be opened for urgent cases or where the public interest deserves it – in these cases only the registry fees for the matters captured by paragraph 1(a) to (c) will be the reduced fees.
