The honest headline: where urgency is real and evidence exists, Irish courts can move within days — sometimes within one. The honest fine print: speed is manufactured from preparation, and the manufacturing process runs at the pace of your evidence, not your alarm.
The Gears, and Their Speeds
The system’s three gears match urgency to process: ex parte — the same-day capability, for cases where notice defeats the purpose or time genuinely doesn’t exist, granting interim orders that hold matters until a return date days away; short service — the workhorse: leave to serve on abridged notice, the contested hearing within days; and the ordinary interlocutory motion on standard timelines where urgency is real but not instant. Which gear fits is itself a judgment call made early — overclaiming urgency damages credibility, underclaiming it forfeits protection.
What Speed Actually Requires
Every fast order stands on the same foundations, assembled before the courtroom: the grounding affidavit — your sworn story, coherent and complete; the exhibits — the contract, the photographs, the logs, the correspondence; the chronology that survives hostile reading — including the honest answer to “why now?”, because delay is the first question; the undertaking as to damages confronted rather than discovered at the door; and, ex parte, the full-and-frank discipline observed scrupulously. This is why the practical speed limit is usually the client’s: the caller with documents in hand can move in days; the caller with grievances but no papers starts by gathering them.
The takeaway in one line: the courts’ speed is real and available — to applicants who arrive ready. If something is moving now, the evidence-gathering and the call happen today; the “bring to the first call” list on the Readiness Check is the head start.
A clock already running? 01 5827148 — urgent calls taken, including out of hours.