Mr. Ciarán Breen:

I agree and I have said at both this committee and at the Committee of Public Accounts - the Deputy will probably have heard me saying this over the years - that we really need the reforms that we are awaiting, particularly in clinical negligence cases. We need the pre-action protocol. We need it not least for the families, because these are very tragic cases, with the idea of having to go to court every time even though we try to mitigate the worst aspects of it by trying to get cases to mediation. If we had a pre-action protocol, there is no doubt that that behavioural model, which is radically different to the current tort system model, would bring relief all around, even in front-loading decisions that both parties are required to make within that protocol in the shortest period of time, and get to mediation much more quickly. One of the real advantages of the pre-action protocol is the narrowing of the window between the making of the claim and, ultimately, the family getting their settlement. That would be a far better process.