The Government's chief legal adviser has said the proliferation of legal challenges to legislation or to decisions by public bodies, especially in the planning and environmental areas, was of significant political and public concern.
Attorney General Rossa Fanning was speaking at a conference on public law in Dublin, organised by his office and the office of the Chief State Solicitor.
Mr Fanning said the fact that citizens had the opportunity to challenge the actions of the Government and statutory bodies before an independent judiciary was something Irish people should be thankful for, as people in many parts of the world did not have this opportunity.
He said it was an "intended design feature" of the Irish model of Government.
However, he said it now occurred at a frequency beyond what our predecessors might have anticipated.
The Attorney General said losing such cases was a fact of life and governments could approach this in different ways, he said.
Mr Fanning said he was proud to say he was the legal adviser to a Government that was "wholly committed to the rule of law both domestically and internationally" and always sought to adhere to it.
However, he said this did not mean the Irish legal system was beyond reproach or incapable of improvement.
Mr Fanning added it was always open to the Oireachtas to amend the law if the courts interpreted provisions in a way that created an unintended or undesirable outcome.
Mr Fanning said if the point had been reached where the courts were too often being used as an "institutional filibuster" by litigants who wanted to delay and obstruct then it was perfectly reasonable for politicians to consider if the judicial review model struck the right balance.
He said the complexity of EU law in areas such as planning and environmental issues, as well as the rules on costs in planning litigation, had combined to create a climate in which "many reasonable people" now believed there was "excessive judicial review litigation" in those areas and the system was generally too favourable to individual objectors.
He said more simply, there was a view that the common good was being sacrificed on the altar of individual rights.
Mr Fanning said the Government was known to be looking at this issue and he said any legal system must effectively serve the interests of the society that is governed by it and must operate to facilitate the realisation of societal objectives, not to frustrate them.
The Attorney General said judges and politicians here and elsewhere were experiencing a reduced respect for institutions and officeholders and a "general coarsening of the discourse".
Mr Fanning mentioned "appalling threats" made to prominent politicians in recent weeks.
He added that judges were the subject of much unwarranted criticism and sometimes "worse".
The Attorney General pointed to the 296 complaints made against 111 judges in the Judicial Council’s 2024 report and noted that not one of the complaints was admissible and many were attempts to relitigate an unsuccessful case.
Mr Fanning said judges were not infallible and it was perfectly permissible to criticise judicial decisions.
But he said it was much more problematic when the outcomes of individual cases were misrepresented, and the criticism was extended to the legal system as a whole.
He added that the system was often said to be "broken, unworkable or unfixable" by people who had not considered the evidence a court had to consider or the law the court had to apply.
Mr Fanning said the role of Government was important and Ireland was fortunate to have a Government that respected the work of the courts and was very wary of populist criticisms of the judiciary.
He said legal advisers to Government were in the service of the public as a whole and the State should act in the public interest in pursuing litigation.
The Attorney General of England and Wales Richard Hermer KC also spoke at the conference.
He warned the rule of law was under attack in democratic countries in a manner and intensity not witnessed "for generations".
Mr Hermer said judges now faced physical threat and horrendous abuse on social media and this was now having a detrimental effect on judicial recruitment.
He added this was a part of a wider pattern of an effort to discredit essential institutions of state and he warned that this was a "real moment in history".
Mr Hermer said there was a fear about where this might take us and people could not be complacent that the rule of law because it was so self-evidently in the national interest, would always be safe.
He said those involved in upholding the law should be out explaining why it was so essential to security and to the success of prosperous democratic societies.
