Mr. Ciarán Breen:

Absolutely, Chairman. We have 10,658 outstanding claims that we are managing at a potential cost of €3.15 billion. Clinical claims amount to 3,196, which is a €2.33 billion estimated liability. That is 30% by volume terms, in terms of the number of claims, and yet representing 74% of the potential cost. On the general side, we have 7,462 claims that are active at a cost of €820 million. They are the employers and public liability and property damage claims against the State.

Our total transactional expenditure is the amount of money that we spend in a particular calendar year across both schemes, that is, the clinical indemnity scheme and the general indemnity scheme. In 2017, that was €303 million and in 2018, it went up to €347 million. One reason that has climbed in the way it has is due to things like claims inflation and the factoring in of the Gill Russell case, which is the case dealing with the discount rate and the calculation of special damages. In addition, we are setting and resolving more claims as well.

Our clinical claims resolved in the year 2018 came to approximately €247 million, compared with €134 million in the previous year. If I could explain the €92 million gap, about which members might wonder, we have set it out in our annual report that it is due to the Gill Russell uplifts. These were cases that we had settled on the basis of the higher discount rate and when the Court of Appeal gave its judgment, we had to pay at the lower rate. Consequently, there were differences to be paid on some claims that we had settled and that amounted to €65 million. The awards over €1 million jumped from 20 in 2017 to 56 in 2018 and then we had other awards and settlements; we just simply had at a higher number, up from 42 to 59. That is probably the overall pen picture of the statistics.