Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This is an issue that the previous Committee of Public Accounts dealt with on several occasions.

The State Claims Agency appeared before us recently. The main area is the one that Deputy Carthy alluded to, namely, the HSE. Most of the very expensive claims relate to accidents at birth. We see settlements weekly. No amount would ever be compensation for the person who might have been and his or her resultant quality of life had that accident not happened.

One of the ways of dealing with this matter more cost efficiently was to be the open disclosure process as opposed to a protracted legal approach. Interestingly, the State Claims Agency told us that the pandemic had changed the situation significantly, in that there was a greater likelihood that people would pursue mediated settlements as opposed to court settlements. Individual solicitors were giving that advice because going through the courts had grown more difficult. As such, it appears that it is at the level of solicitors as opposed to the agency that there is movement. The agency said that it had encouraged that. The figures seem to suggest that, but it was at the level of the legal profession that movement was slower.

If there is a speedier and less legalistic resolution, it has the benefit of cutting costs on the legal side. This is one of the matters we need to keep pursuing to ensure a more efficient and less legalistic approach. We need to understand what the impediment is - we have not quite got to it - and what can be done to improve it.

According to the figures we have been given, there is a contingent liability in this regard. Will Mr. McCarthy address it? It relates to the HSE in particular. From memory, the contingent liability is a multiple of the liability that is captured in the second column.