Mr. Ciarán Breen:

I think one of the things which would effect a major change, particularly in regard to legal costs which are such a high percentage, is the pre-action protocols. The pre-action protocols have been enabled as a result of the Legal Services Regulation Act. They are similar and will be similar to the protocols that operate in England and Wales in regard to clinical negligence. They are all about the pre-proceedings. In other words, one is not getting into those high legal costs associated with proceedings. The purpose of the protocols is to drive behaviour on both sides to be very upfront very quickly, to concede liability for the things one should be conceding very quickly and getting to settlement at a much earlier time. The effect of it in England and Wales was so dramatic that it reduced the average life of a clinical negligence claim, down from about 4.5 years before the introduction of the protocols to about eight or nine months. If one looks at the National Health Service Litigation Authority's 2014 accounts in particular, it has a graph showing the measurable effect of pre-action protocols and what they will do. We take on average about three years from the time we get the claim to resolving it. We would like to make that a lot less except we have a lot of difficulties getting experts and getting our reports and so on together. The pre-action protocols would definitely change that and take out a lot of cost building that is in the current tort system.