Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Public Accounts Committee

2014 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Chapter 2 - Government Debt
Chapter 24 - Accounts of the National Treasury Management Agency
National Treasury Management Agency Financial Statements 2015

9:00 am

Mr. Ciarán Breen:

It has. There are two parts to it and I refer to the prudential margin, as we call it, which is a conventional insurer provision that they do. Just to explain why we had it there and what is its purpose, when one sets a reserve on a case, the case can deteriorate over time. Moreover, our reports on a plaintiff, which might be medical reports, might be more favourable in terms of outcome than, for example, their own reports. Consequently, one can get a deteriorating picture. It also is to allow for any precedent a case might set, for example, new levels of damages. Currently, for example, there is some active debate in the court about the cap on general damages and whether that should be increased. That margin was there for that. Our actuaries are an independent firm of actuaries in London and they adjudicate all of our indemnity schemes and provided advices on it. They advised us to maintain it but to incorporate the Comptroller and Auditor General's statistical probability model as well. Effectively, we are marrying the two models in respect of our reserve setting. The Deputy might be happy to know that our actuaries indicated that on a look-back basis from our inception to the present, when they look at what we reserved and what the outcome was, they said we got it right over the period.