Paul Hosford highlights the eye-watering amount that is paid out in legal costs for clinical negligence claims.
The claims environment in Ireland remains challenging. General damages awarded are often many multiples of what is awarded in the UK and Irish legal costs can also be higher than anywhere else in the western world.
It is right that we question whether such costs are sustainable for the HSE and whether this amount of money should be spent on lawyers’ fees, particularly as we tackle a significant waiting list backlog.
The high cost of clinical negligence also impacts on healthcare professionals who pay for indemnity to protect themselves from claims.
At Medical Protection Society, we have long called for legal reform to tackle the rising cost of clinical negligence and the associated legal costs. Swift introduction of the necessary legislation for pre-action protocols would make a notable contribution.
A pre-action protocol provides the opportunity to investigate and resolve claims sooner, without the need to go to court, by promoting early identification and communication of the issues in dispute between the parties.
In Ireland, only 53% of cases are resolved at the pre-action stage. By way of contrast, in England and Wales, where pre-action protocols have been in place for over 20 years, over 70% of claims are resolved prior to the issue of court proceedings.
The formal introduction of pre-action protocols, which the Government has accepted the recommendation for, would result in many more cases being resolved at the pre-action stage. This would reduce delays in providing compensation to patients, reduce the stress that patients and healthcare professionals endure, and reduce legal costs for all parties.
The final step is for the Government to draft the necessary regulations to enable the formal introduction of pre-action protocols — something we believe can be done quickly as the legal powers required already exist.
We know the pandemic has affected the Government’s immediate priorities but this issue is becoming ever more pressing and we hope progress can be made without further delay.
Dr Rob Hendry
Medical Protection Society
London
Government needs to stand up to SF
I don’t usually agree with Fergus Finlay’s articles relating to politics, but today I send him heartiest congratulations on his incisive and well thought out article, expressing sentiments that for far too long have remained unsaid.
He flagged the fact that, relative to other countries, we were brought through the pandemic relatively unscathed and indeed he gives generous credit to all who brought us there.
Billions had to be borrowed for Covid payments, job losses, company shutdowns, special medical cares, and of course vaccines.
Yes, vaccines were free to us, but not to the exchequer.
These billions of euro will have to be paid for.
Despite that fiscal problem, and even though they are not mentioned by name in the article, the constant bleating of Mary Lou McDonald, Pearse Doherty, Louise O’Reilly, Eoin Ó Broin, and others, persistently demanding more billions of borrowing and more reduction in revenue needs to be responded to with full vigour.
Unfortunately to date, such response is not forthcoming from Government benches. They seem to be paralysed in dealing with the absurd Sinn Féin demands or are they afraid to confront them with the economic reality?
The Government did not create inflation, nor oil, gas, or electricity increases. They didn’t put mica into the gravel pits in Donegal. However, by capitulating to every SF demand, they are making themselves hostages to fortune to the new demands resulting from the Ukraine war.
In simple terms we must all adjust to the new reality. Living standards will inevitably reduce and no government can cushion that.
Joe Kennelly
Inniscarra
Co Cork
Capping fuel prices is not viable option
I would like to address the idea of a suggested price cap on fuel (at present), which certain commentators seem to think would solve all our problems. If prices were capped below the cost of buying imported fuel, how would we be able to buy fuel. Importers would not buy the stuff and then we would have no supply.
Also, if fuel were to be capped, what about other commodities such as food, meat, vegetables, and fruit? Would they also be capped?
I don’t see that as a viable option unless we go the whole hog and become a communist country.
Dudley Berry
Clonmel
Co Tipperary
Standing together to forge peace
This is an open letter to our Irish Government and a call out to authentic leaders to become peacekeepers immediately.
From peacemaking, we can create a way out of the international rhetoric that many countries use to justify military means as a way to assert their identity — making victims of innocent people, including babies.
We need to become peacemaking communities and use military organisations for peaceful actions.
We are all in this and must stand together.
The world listens to the Irish.
Claire Desmond
Cork
Banish the ‘snakes’ out of Ukraine
St Patrick, a 5th century ‘non-Irish national’ by birth, has through the generations since become the core and the heartbeat of everything Irish, to the extent that his cloak now dresses the great buildings of the world in green on our national day.
According to legend, he chased all the snakes from this land into the sea after they began attacking him while he was undertaking a 40-day fast.
My earnest wish this St Patrick’s Day is that a 21st century Maewyn Succat (the saint’s real name) will hurriedly emerge to banish all the slithering reptiles that are currently endeavouring to squeeze the life out of and devour Ukraine and its people.
Michael Gannon
Kilkenny
Adoption Bill is discriminatory
That the Adoption (Information and Tracing) Bill 2021 even exists is both discriminatory against and further inequitable for a group of people of a particular family status.
Placing certain conditions on access to their own records promotes discrimination.
Attributing a set of presumed behaviours to a group of people on grounds of family status, race, ethnicity, religion, etc is discriminatory.
This bill exists because of such a presumption in respect of adopted people.
Furthermore, further discrimination — in the form of the wrongful official interpretation of GDPR — continues to be perpetrated regarding responses to record access requests by adopted people, despite there being nothing in the original 70-year-old Adoption Act 1952 that precludes adopted people from knowing their own names.
Despite the fact that most of the mothers whose consent for their children to be adopted signed consent to adoption forms under the auspices of the 1952 Adoption Act, this modern-day Adoption (Tracing & Information) Bill skews the spirit of the older act.
This retrograde step of seeking to apply such a new level of conditions is disingenuous.
Which TD or senator would wish to support and promulgate discrimination, inequity, and injustice?
Which TD or senator would wish to have their name on State records for all time as having supported and promulgated discrimination, injustice, and inequity in these enlightened times?
Michele Savage
Dublin 12
