Mr. Stuart Gilhooly:

It may, but I am not entirely convinced that it would. Very few cases are turned down because the award is slightly out of kilter. They are almost always turned down because they are way off. For the sake of argument, let us say that there is an award of €15,000. If my client told me that he or she would like to take it, I might say that, although the case was worth €16,000 or €17,000, he or she would be much better off taking the award than taking a chance in court. Let us say that my fee is €1,000. In such a situation, there is no way that the extra €1,000 would make any difference to whether the person turned down the award. Most of my colleagues are like me, in that I would only ever advise a claimant to turn down an award where I felt that the case was either worth considerably more or was not ready to be settled at that stage.