Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I thank the officials for coming in today and for the work they are doing on this. Mr. Maher stated that the longer we keep people in PIAB, the better it is in terms of reducing costs to the Exchequer in terms of insurance. I ask the witnesses to expand on two statements they made. The issue relates to payouts for individuals. If someone has an accident in a place of employment, as we heard today, the individual who is taking the claim does not need to worry about a reduced cost because it is done using the same system as the court uses. The way we will reduce costs is in terms of legal fees. To take the case of a person who owns a premises on which an accident happens, we have seen cases in the courts where the amount of money people have been awarded seems ridiculous. For example, someone who falls and bruises a thumb can get thousands of euro.

I am referring to what occurs if PIAB assesses payouts in the same way as the courts. A person in mediation could feel the claimant is getting away with more than he or she deserves, perhaps because he or she has a doctor's certificate or claims it is necessary to be out of work for three months or another period. The person in mediation could feel it is unfair but could not really go to court because he or she would know that doing so would incur legal fees. Therefore, whatever the agreement with PIAB, it would be very hard for a court payout to be lower — unless, of course, the case was won in court, which would be even tougher.While it might be less for the person who owns the premises, he or she would still feel very aggrieved if the amount of money someone got was quite high.