Ms Dorothea Dowling:

The first is not to publish the book of quantum as planned. We were told that it was based on data, which is a problem in itself, from 2013 and 2014. In November 2015, the Court of Appeal stated that Ireland needed to do this in a completely different way. Using the maximum in a celebrity case - it was €400,000 for a quadriplegic, a person who, sadly, was not getting better; such people are the serious cases - as 100% on our scale, one would calibrate the other injuries down that scale to 1%. There are large official actuarial losses for care costs but if €400,000 is generally the maximum, then whiplash will probably be 1% or €4,000. This would bring us into line with the approach taken on mainland Europe, from where we want to attract new players, but it would require buy-in from doctors to prepare reports in a more scientific manner.