Mr. Stuart Gilhooly:

Allow me go back approximately two sentences. The Senator was correct to that point in that a client finds a solicitor and they can then sit down. My experience is the clients practically never ask what the case is worth. If they did, my answer would be that I have no idea. I can tell a client what could happen. He or she could recover in a month, six months or never recover. Those amount to completely different figures and scenarios. We do not just say a whiplash is X and a broken arm is Y. It does not work that way.

Perhaps the committee will not mind me telling a brief story that can show how things change. I had the case of a very unfortunate lady approximately seven or eight years ago who broke her arm. It was a fairly standard broken arm. It was probably worth, on the face of it, somewhere between €20,000 and €30,000. What happened to the lady was horrific. Her broken arm developed into chronic pain syndrome and dystonia to the point where she lost power in one arm, then the other and eventually the power in her legs. It was bizarre but it happened. The doctor who reviewed her said he had never seen anything like it in his time. It went from what seemed on the face of it to be a simple injury to being a catastrophic and life-changing injury that was worth seven figures. One can never tell what a case is worth exactly.

I do not accept the whole argument that whiplash is this or that. What even is whiplash?