To ask the Secretary of State for Justice on how many occasions a coroner acting under Rule 5 of the Coroners (Practice and Procedure) Rules (NI) 1963 exercised his power to exclude the public from an inquest in each of the last five years. (216585)

The power to exclude the public from an inquest has not been exercised by coroners since April 2006, when the new Coroners Service for Northern Ireland was established.

Before the Coroners Service for Northern Ireland was established in April 2006, coroners did not have computerised systems to assist them and therefore the information is not held centrally and could be provided by manually checking paper records only at a disproportionate cost.