The court building in Monchique reopened on January 4th, 2017 having been closed in 2014 as part of the previous justice minister’s reorganisation of Portugal's justice provision, referred to as her ‘new judicial map’.
Monchique Mayor Rui André was not in favour of the closure of the town’s second biggest employer and set out to lobby Minister, Paula Teixeira da Cruz, for the reopening of the facility - today his wish was granted, despite the €50,000 cost of sorting out the mess left behind when the court was shut down.
Monchique's was one of 20 courts shut down in a move that took justice further from the people and did nothing to increase the throughput of cases which number in the millions, such is the backlog created primarily by banks having to take defaulting customers to court before the amounts due can be written off.
Nine courts have been reopened under the more inclusive regime of the current minister, Francisca van Dunem, (pictured above), who also is increasing the number of trained staff but has asked each council to supply a member of staff to handle administrative tasks.
The mayor commented to Sul Informação today, that “the reopening of the court is very important. It is the return to our county of a state service. It is a symbolic, but also a matter of proximity, so that people do not have to travel outside the municipality to obtain, for example, a simple judicial record."
The Minister of Justice Francisca Van Dunem, said today that the reopening programme is to combat the desertification of the interior of the country and to facilitate access to justice but failed to mention that the reopened courts will not be able to handle the full range of judicial matters as previously with more serious cases needing to be heard in the old court network.
