Personal injury claims soar to €217m

THE amount of money paid out to personal injury victims soared to €217 million last year.

InjuriesBoard.ie, formerly the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB), revealed 8,845 claimants received compensation payouts last year based on its assessments, an increase of more than 600 people compared with the figure for 2007.

The number of payouts made for sums in excess of e38,000 — the upper limit on cases dealt with in the Circuit Court, although higher awards can be made in other courts — also soared last year by 47%, while the number of awards for amounts over e100,000 climbed by 87%.

The chief executive of InjuriesBoard.ie, Patricia Byron, claimed that since the PIAB was established in 2004 it had brought about direct and indirect savings of between e200m and e250m for the economy, based on the legal savings made by avoiding the old “adversarial system” in the circuit court.

Members of the legal profession have questioned this and stressed that people can still employ the services of legal representation.

It has also been claimed that as recently as 2007 an increasing number of cases had entered the courts despite the services of InjuriesBoard.ie being available to potential claimants.

However, InjuriesBoard.ie has claimed it has made awards at the same level as the courts but more than two years quicker and at 70% delivery costs.

The average award above e38,000 last year was e69,715, an increase of more than e3,000 compared to the figure for 2007, while the average award value for sums below e38,000 was e18,151, again a slight increase on the figure for the previous year.

While InjuriesBoard.ie said any claim arrived at in the courts will require 46% of any final award to cover admin and legal costs, the rate for cases it dealt with is just 7% on average of any award.

Patricia Byron said: “Evidence available to the board suggests that as confidence in our non-adversarial model grows, a greater number of the more serious or complex injuries are assessed by us.”

However, she said there had been no evidence of an increase in claims due to the recession. “Some insurers have commented recently on a surge of personal injury claims due to the recession,” she said.

“From our point of view, it is simply too early to draw the same conclusion. The pace of increase in claims has reduced from 10% in 2006/2007 to 6% in 2007/2008 — a trend that is more indicative of a levelling off than a spike in volumes. To date in 2009, we have no evidence of an increase.”

She also referred to a Supreme Court decision delivered on December 19 which allows InjuriesBoard.ie to copy claimants who have instead engaged the services of a solicitor with correspondence so they can be kept informed of the progress of their personal injuries claim.