Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Somebody suggested that American Chamber Of Commerce Ireland. I do not know because we do not want to just get a PR job here. Somebody mentioned that name to me. Can we note and publish the letters? We are writing to GlaxoSmithKline as indicated. There will be a private briefing session next week for the benefit of members but we will then have a public session. I understand that we will have a briefing document from Brian Keegan from Chartered Accountants Ireland either today or the next day. As soon as that comes in, it will be circulated so people will have had an opportunity to go through his topics. The secretariat and I met with him to give him a briefing regarding what we were looking for and he will send information based on that. People will be able to put any other questions to him in the private session. We can then go through it in public. He will be impartial. As a result of that public meeting on 22 February, we will want to meet again with the Department of Finance and Revenue. That is agreed.

No. 1059 is correspondence from Mr Ciarán Breen, director of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, dated 31 January 2018, providing a response to queries on management of claims by the State Claims Agency and the principle of open disclosure. This is something to which we should return when the NTMA appears before us with its financial statements, which it normally has in the first half of the year. This is a very important letter because according to the NTMA, the estimated liability at the end of 2017 was €2.662 billion. It is overwhelming.

I want to highlight a few items in Mr. Breen's letter because it is an issue about which everyone talks. First of all, he is very critical of the legal profession representing clients. This letter says that sometimes things take time but that this can happen where the settlement demands made by the plaintiff's lawyers are significantly overstated. Mr. Breen goes on to say that the State Claims Agency has direct experience where solicitors acting on behalf of plaintiffs have originally demanded a multiple of two or three times the figure they eventually settled for.

He instances one case where a claim was put in for €26 million in compensation and settled for €12 million. He goes on to say that there are occasions where faced with the individual plaintiff's law firm whose settlement demands were excessive, the only way the State Claims Agency can discharge its duty to the taxpayer is to take the case to court. He is quite scathing about certain members of the legal profession. He does not name them.

He goes on to talk about the Legal Services Regulation Act 2016, which provides for the making of regulations to introduce pre-action protocols. They have not been implemented. The letter states that the State Claims Agency has on its own initiative pioneered the introduction of interim payments in the form of periodic payment orders in 74 cases since 2010 but that out of the 74 cases, 15 plaintiffs did not proceed with them after a short period of time and asked for their lump sum because of the lack of a legislative basis backing up periodic payment orders system.

Mr. Breen highlighted the fact that most of the claims involving almost €2 billion are in respect of clinical negligence claims while the others are general claims and that a total of 9,956 claims were active at the end of 2017 totalling €2.662 billion. There are 2,976 clinical cases with an average estimate of €666,000 to deal with each of them based on its figures.

Mr. Breen then goes on to the issue of open disclosure. I just stopped reading at this stage. The letter states that there were reports in 2008, 2009 and 2013; a review in 2014; and training for staff in 2015. On and on it goes. We have not seen any result from open disclosure yet. I am highlighting those points because it would take too long to read the letter and just noting and publishing it would not do the public a service because it needs to know the extent of involvement.