If the referendum is passed, a new court will be set up between the High Court and the Supreme Court. The central aim of the proposed change is to clear the backlog of cases currently waiting to be heard in the legal system.

The referendum on the Court of Appeal also contains a proposal to change how the Supreme Court gives its decision in certain cases. The proposed abolition of the One Judgment Rule would mean Supreme Court judges will be able to give individual reasoning behind their rulings. However, there have been concerns raised that the proposed court could be expensive to run and that the legislation has not been fully thought out.

To debate the issues, Chris and Ivan were joined by two members of the legal profession: Paul Anthony McDermott, constitutional lawyer and Stuart Gilhooly, solicitor and junior vice president of the Law Society.

Paul Anthony - who has some reservations about the proposed changes - says “I naturally get suspicious when everyone says ‘this is a good thing’. I think some critical thinking needs to be brought to it… In my experience in law, the more layers you introduce to a system and the more courts & judges you have, the more cases there’ll be, the more delays there’ll be. It won’t solve the problem that Irish people are very litigious”.

Stuart is in favour of the referendum, arguing that the courts are currently struggling to deal with the workload. “We’re asking our Supreme Court to work incredibly hard,” he observed. “It’s inevitable that the quality must drop a little bit. I can tell you [the Supreme Court judges] are the cream of the legal profession, but we’re asking them to work like cart horses”.

You can listen back to the full debate via the player above. Or you can watch the studio discussion through the YouTube video below.