A free online register will shortly display all licensed premises in the country as the registration system moves online.
Intoxicating liquor and club licences for pubs, hotels and restaurants will be viewable online eliminating the need to attend at a court office.
A Courts Service spokesman said that gardai, Revenue officials and legal professionals will all benefit from online handling of licencing arrangements, as the system moves away from manual entry.
From this morning, the new search facility will be fully available at www.csol.ie. This new tool will display the licensee to operate any licensed premises, in any county.
Historical searches
Historical licensing records (since 2009) can be searched and obtained for a fee, which is currently €35 per premises.
The move is part of the Courts Service commitment to eGovernment, to allow online public access to a centralised register of up-to-date information conveniently, from home, the office or on-the-go via mobile devices.
Online licence applications are currently being piloted in four counties and this will roll out nationally early in 2020, to the benefit of 20,000 licensees on 16,000 premises.
Efficiencies
The efficiencies introduced by the eRegister project will cut down the time, effort and costs incurred by solicitors and the public, as well as by the Courts Service, when processing licensing searches.
Chief Justice Frank Clarke (pictured) said this morning: “The Courts Service has recently adopted what can fairly be described as a radical vision for the next ten years which is set out in a document entitled ‘Supporting Access to Justice in a Modern Digital Ireland’.
“As part of this, a pilot scheme to allow solicitor firms to lodge, pay and track applications for licensing online was begun last year.
“It has been now been extended to counties Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim and Louth. The Courts Service plans to fully roll out the online e-licensing system over the coming year, saving solicitors’ firms and ultimately clients both time and money.
“That amounts to up to 50,000 transactions going from paper and attendance at an office, to online”.
The Chief Justice said that the new online facilities have numerous benefits for practitioners and notice parties including:
- Potentially completing the entire licensing application online,
- Reducing or eliminating attendance in court offices in relation to licensing,
- Remotely access all your licensing applications,
- Licensing court orders and certificates now available electronically,
- Secure online payments supported by internal authorisation processes,
- Online eRegister for licensing,
- Advance knowledge of notice party intentions,
- Cost and time savings for solicitor offices,
- Case information available through the system to relevant parties.
He said that the courts, “now also have online fines payments, online small claims applications, online judgment search, online legal diary search, online Deed Poll register, and an online bankruptcy register.
More to do
“But there is a lot more to do and increased digitalisation forms a key central part of our strategy.”
Solicitors not yet registered on CSOL.ie are encouraged to do so as soon as possible. More information on how to register can be found on www.courts.ie
There were 41,890 licensing applications received in 2018. Since July 2016, the Courts Service has manually entered approximately 45,000 licensing applications on the new system. Since the online licensing pilot began in September 2018, in excess of 600 applications online have been received from a handful of solicitors within the four pilot counties.
Prior to the launch, approximately 340 online searches were carried out using CSOL by a small number of professionals – demonstrating the demand for this online service.
The district courts handled 812 public licence renewals in 2018, as well as 868 annual dance licences and 120 temporary dance licences. They also issued 560 restaurant certificates, 1376 lottery licences, 296 club certificates and 35,416 special exemption orders.
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Quelle/Source: Law Society of Ireland Gazette, 22.07.2019
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