Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The job of this committee is to be satisfied that the SCA's provisioning is reasonable. The only way to verify that is by comparing the provision made to the costs of the cases settled. I accept that in some years that could be very much over or under, depending on the number of high cost cases that might come in a year. I ask Mr. Breen to give us the figures for the last five years. If we had those figures, we could then see over that five year period if the SCA has been under or over-providing. That will also be useful information for the SCA. I presume it may have it already. When this committee gets large figures, such as this €3.15 billion - I know they are audited - we as a committee have to be satisfied that we have verified the figures from our perspective as well. We have a duty to interrogate the figures. I think this is a simple way for us to interrogate the figures.