IRISH JUDGES ARE among the highest paid in Europe, second only to judges in Scotland, a report by the The European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) showed.

An average Irish judge earned a gross salary of €147,961 in 2010 with Scotland’s €150,106 gross salary for judges topping the list. The lowest paid judges in Europe were in Moldova with a gross salary of just €3,220 in 2010.

The gross annual salary for a Supreme Court Judge in Ireland was €257,872 second only to Scotland and Moldova’s Supreme Court Judges salaries again ranked lowest at just €4,756 in 2010.

The report also showed 23 European states have less than two assistants per professional judge while Ireland, Scotlans and Portugal had the highest ratio from three assistants per judge to seven.

Legal aid and public prosecutors

The total annual approved budget allocated to the whole Irish justice system in 2010 was around €2.5 billion. German spent the most in 2010 on its whole justice system in 2010 with a figure of over €13 billion.

A budget of over €280 million was was approved for the courts, public prosecution and legal aid in 2010.

The net annual salary of an Irish public prosecutor was €33,576 according to the report with Swiss public prosecutors earning tip net salaries of over €85,000 in 2010, according to the report.

The report also showed global legal aid budgets increased by 18 per cent on average between 2008 and 2010 in Europe.

The total number of legal aid cases granted per 100,000 inhabitants in Ireland was approximately 1412 with around 1200 of those criminal cases, second only to Monaco.

The average amount of legal aid allocated per case in 2010 was €1,351 with an average of €992  allocated for criminal cases.