Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking at a remove because the Judiciary is the Judiciary and I represent the Government. The separation of powers is important. Everything that has been happening in the UK post Brexit only underscores the importance of that separation to the people's faith in their judicial system and in their ability to have their natural and civil rights protected by an impartial system. Nonetheless, the Injuries Board liaises with the Judiciary and is on the working group. The recently published review of the book of quantum was managed in a helpful way in terms of some of the signals from the Judiciary and there have been a number of interesting judgments since the publication. The costing of an award by the Judiciary is a matter for it, but we can give it much more information to help it set those awards better, for example, through the granularity of information contained in the book of quantum.

Through the personal injuries commission that I want us to establish, we will be able to conduct international benchmarking of the level of personal injury awards in a detailed way and determine how whiplash, for example, is graded abroad. We can consider the use of an independent panel of medical experts to help in assessing injuries that are brought before the courts. We can also consider relativity between awards for injury types. One of our recommendations speaks to that. In this way, we could move away from being outliers. This work needs to be done in tandem with the review of the book of quantum and of the legislation underpinning the Injuries Board. That is how I want to proceed.