Mr. Gerry Cross:

It is my understanding that we would need additional powers to take legal cases. That is a power specifically provided in the UK legislation.

On the personal injury guidelines, as Deputy Farrell said, the very good news is the data from the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, showing a reduction in compensation as a result of the personal injury guidelines. It is, of course, early days. As my colleague, Dr. Cassidy, explained, the settlement channels that are used give very different outcomes in terms of costs. I hope what we will see is that the implementation of the personal injury guidelines will result both in the reduction in claims costs and a far more predictable use of non-litigation based approaches.

The national claims information database will give us a very significant window into how this is feeding through it. It is not there yet because the data are simply not there yet. We think it will give us a significant window into understanding how the reduced compensation outcomes driven by the personal injury guidelines are feeding through. What the NCID will not do is create a sort of counterfactual scenario, as the UK version does. We will be able to see what is happening and how the data are driving through but we will not be able to see clearly what the data would have been if something had not been the case because the database is very much based on the reality. Perhaps my colleague, Dr. Cassidy, would like to add to that.