Mr. Ciarán Breen:

The State Claims Agency, as our annual report has disclosed, was managing 12,000 active claims against State bodies in 2020, with an estimated outstanding liability of more than €4 billion. Some 3,500 of these relate to clinical cases, with an estimate of approximately €3 billion, and 8,500 non-clinical ones, with an estimate of €1 billion. We resolved more than 3,200 claims in 2020 despite the impact of Covid restrictions, which resulted in the courts being effectively restricted to trials relating to urgent personal injury claims for most of the year. Our focus during 2020 and 2021 has been on supporting the system's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, by ensuring that indemnity was not a barrier to that response.