Mr. Stephen Watkins:

If we get 33,500 cases a year, we lose a number at the start - it may be 1,000 or 1,500 - that never go anywhere. We do not know whether they have settled or are not being pursued. We are then relying on the insurer to consent to the case or not. They would consent to approximately 18,000 cases, with us assessing. Even after that we lose a few thousand cases before assessment. They are not pursued. We do not know whether they have been settled or are just not being pursued. The problem is that we can tell the Deputy the exact number of cases we assessed and the number we received. We know the outcome, but there is a huge volume of cases about which we do not know the outcome.

The Central Bank did a study in 2011 in which it asked insurance companies for the outcome of three months of cases that had been finalised. They broke it down into cases that were settled before and during the Injuries Board process. The outcome of that study was that 70% of cases were finalised either by the Injuries Board, through settlements or were not pursued. Only 30% of cases ended up going into litigation. When the board's model was originally conceptualised, the view was that two thirds of cases would be taken out of litigation. Those 2011 figures, which unfortunately are the most recent, would show that approximately 70% of cases have been removed.