Mr. Ciarán Breen:

The clinical indemnity scheme is a particular challenge in terms of its cost, as the Deputy knows. As she mentioned, there have been incidents involving catastrophic injuries to babies and, indeed, generally in clinical negligence. The fact of the matter is that the costs associated with these cerebral palsy cases are very high and, obviously, there is significant injury to children and families have to carry the cost of future care and looking after children over a period of time.

The profile has not changed terribly over the number of years we have been dealing with it, except that the costs have continued to increase fairly dramatically. I will break down incidents of cerebral palsy for the Deputy, by way of an example. In 2016, there were 21 such cases. In 2017, there were 24 such cases. In 2018, there were 17 cases. In 2019, there were 27 cases. In 2020, there were 12. In this year to date, there have been six. That is a total of 107 to date. That shows that a fairly consistent incidence rate is being notified to us.

One of the difficulties that sometimes arises is that for families, the diagnosis of cerebral palsy takes some time and the claim is not made for many years until there is some knowledge as to how the child might be progressing, what the child will require and what his or her life expectancy might be.