Mr. Ciar?n Breen:

I can only tell the Chair, and I cannot remember all the details, that we carried out some analysis a number of years ago of a sample of compensation claims under the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Act. We found two things. One was that there were very long delays between the lodging of the claim and its ultimate settlement. The second part that we found in that audit was that, as a result of the long distance between the claim occurring and the claim being paid, we felt not that there was considerable exaggeration but that you pay far more the longer the claim goes on. We felt, therefore, that many of the claims, had they been within our brief, would have been settled much earlier and for far less than the ultimate settlement.