Speedier and cheaper access to justice is likely to become a reality in Irish defamation actions, not because of Woolf type reforms to the civil justice system, but because the penalising provisions of a 1981 Courts Act have begun to kick in.

The object of the legislation is to penalise
a claimant who takes his case to the High Court, when he should have taken it in a lower court. Circuit court jurisdiction is e38,092.14 (£23,400).