Mr. Ken Murphy:

I wish to make a point on the comparison with the rest of Europe, which echoes a point I made earlier. The civil law system in continental Europe, Scandinavia and, really, the rest of the EU outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland is very different in its approach. It does not really have the fault-based approach, what lawyers call tort, whereby a person's negligence caused the injury to someone else and therefore creates an obligation to compensate the injured person. Strangely, negligence is not even a concept in civil law. It is a different system in continental Europe where these things are socialised and it becomes an issue for the health system and social support system not a system based on the person causing the compensation to be paid. It is not a valid comparison with the rest of Europe. I accept that the common law system in the United Kingdom and Ireland is very similar and hardly distinguishable at all. Again, there may be social or historical reasons why certain things are viewed differently in compensation terms. I do not know whether it is true or not, but it was said to me some years ago that perhaps the experience in the United Kingdom of huge numbers of people being injured in the First World War and the Second World War gives them socially a greater tolerance for people being injured and putting up with it than was the case here. It is a theory, but the fact is that the system in Ireland, and the Judiciary operating the principles - based on Irish law - of what is fair and reasonable, have produced certain results and it seems to us that is with the support of the Irish people. Interestingly, I do not think one will find it criticised by the victims, the question is whether in fact we should be interfering with this for the benefit of the profits of insurance companies.