Revealed: €500m bill for hospital negligence

Settlement and compensation payouts by the State to victims of “negligence, incompetence, and neglect” in Irish hospitals have totalled almost €500m since 2011, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

In the past five years, the rate of claims and amounts paid out to victims in cases where the State was negligent, soared from €58m in 2011 in 567 cases, to nearly €100m last year, in 1,307 cases.

One of the most high- profile cases recently settled was for €6.3m, involving Grace, a woman with severe physical and intellectual disabilities who had been abused for two decades at a state-funded foster home.