Divorce: Legal "settlement talks" prior to court: a money-making gimmick, or a serious option?

I'm currently going through a divorce. My solicitor proposed settlement talks and I gave her the affidavit of means about nine months ago with the intention that both sides would meet to hammer out a deal and just get the court to sign off on it. My ex, however, has not submitted her affidavit of means yet. To my shock, she can delay everything for years and years because Irish law has no time limits on the divorce process.

I have not submitted a Civil Bill to initiate the divorce as my solicitor told me the Affidavit of Means is the first step. Accordingly, I have wasted 9 months waiting for my ex and, because I was not told to issue the Civil Bill to initiate the divorce, I am not on the waiting list to have my divorce heard. I made it clear to my (very expensive and well-recommended) solicitor that I want to get the divorce sooner rather than later. But it seems by not prioritising the Civil Bill first, the whole process is going to be longer than I wanted.

A cynical person, who is very familiar with what goes on in family law courtcases, said to me "Of course your solicitor wants your Affidavit of Means first because she wants to see how much money and assets you have". That person further said that I should have just ignored the solicitor and lodged the Civil Bill and the other two documents straight with the court as using a solicitor in a family law case is "like wanting to get a taxi from Dublin to Cork but the taxi driver brings you to Belfast on the way". His alternative was to directly lodge the Civil Bill and other legal documents here - https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/birth_family_relationships/separation_and_divorce/divorce_decrees.html#l53380 - and then, once going through case progression, settlement talks could happen but the advice I'm getting about settlement talks first is simply "the lawyers trying to drag everything out for as long as possible and make as much money out of you before it gets to court."

Could somebody familiar with family law please tell me if my solicitor is leading me up the garden path here with this "wait until the other side responds with their Affidavit of Means"? Does that stance have any benefit for somebody like me who wants to end this circus as soon as possible? (the family home, where both parents remain, is very tense and the children are recurrently upset so dragging this out for any reason, let alone to increase profits of a legal team, is ineffably cruel.) What should I do?

Caranica

I'm going through a divorce and the first I knew was notice that they'd lodged the civil bill. They provided an affidavit of means but I haven't been asked to yet. My solicitor contacted the court to inform them that they'd been retained and while the divorce would not be contested, settlement talks were needed. 9 months later and we're no further down the line. That's fine by me.