Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy has said, this work is part of the broader insurance reform programme through which we have made many changes to make the conditions for insurance better, to drive down premiums and to make the market more stable and predictable. A large part of that is strengthening the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, and making that system really work. The Deputy will recall that, when the board was originally established in 2004, there was a drift towards the court process, which the Deputy has mentioned. Frankly, that undermined the reform under way at the time. We saw a drift and very high awards being made in respect of what seemed like soft tissue injuries and minor injuries. Cases were being taken very frequently and there were very high legal costs associated with that. The Government has made 99 changes across the board. A big part of this is strengthening PIAB. We have reset the dial and PIAB is now the natural place to resolve a claim. If somebody has an accident, they are entitled to compensation for the damage that has happened to them. However, people are not entitled to make claims that are not justified. We have seen that fall away. We have seen good evidence of smaller claims falling away.

My concern is the drift into court, which the Deputy is right to highlight. We have created a statutory system that is quicker than going to court and where you get essentially the same outcome but that is one twentieth of the cost. It is 20 times more expensive for a case to be resolved in court than through PIAB. The Deputy is right to ask who pays for that because it is the policyholders. When a case goes to court, it is 20 times more expensive to resolve it and it is the Deputy, the Chair and everybody else sitting here who pays for it. Everybody's premiums cover the additional cost of going to court. I am trying to make sure the overwhelming majority of cases are resolved within the PIAB system. I see too many cases drifting into the courts system and I have to question some of the incentives in that regard.

I have been in this position for nearly a year now and I have been speaking to businesses, the insurance companies, the Alliance for Insurance Reform, business owners and the Garda fraud squad, I have been watching every different metric, and I keep hearing there are some solicitors and firms that are routinely not accepting outcomes from PIAB. That causes me great concern. I keep hearing about some firms that have never accepted an outcome from PIAB. I cannot understand that. I keep hearing about this difficulty. I assure the Deputy this is something I am going to discuss with the Law Society and the legal profession and that, along with the Courts Service and the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, I will be examining all instances of cases passing from PIAB into the courts.

For example, PIAB might give an award of €5,000. I even hear of situations in which solicitors have not shared that information with the claimant. I will be interrogating that information but it would be a cause of great concern. Where such a case migrates into court, it may move into the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court. You would have to question both how that is happening and why. It takes a great deal longer to resolve a case of that kind and it comes with attendant legal costs. That is a subject of great concern for me because this Government wants the PIAB reform programme and the insurance programme to work. It wants people to be able to get compensation where needed but quickly, effectively and not at great additional cost to everybody else. That is not to say there will not be cases that need to go to court from time to time. I am talking about the broader system and making sure there is no drift. That is a conversation I will be having very directly with the Law Society. I thank the Deputy for raising the issue.