Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal administers the scheme of compensation for personal injuries criminally inflicted. Under the terms of the scheme, the tribunal is entirely independent in the matter of individual decisions on applications for compensation. The Deputy will be aware that because of the manner in which cases have been recorded, in particular applications which are received but not actively pursued by the applicant, it has not been possible to date to provide the number of active cases that remain unsettled by the tribunal. To address the issue, I have requested an assessment of the caseload of the tribunal, which I am informed will be submitted soon. I will be happy to provide the Deputy with a further update at that point. Nevertheless, my expectation is that the assessment will include short to medium-term recommendations designed to improve the processing time.

I invite the Deputy to accept that many of these cases are complex and will take considerable time to conclude. Notwithstanding that, I expect that steps can be taken to increase the processing time of more straightforward cases. In addition to these short-to-medium-term measures, the Law Reform Commission, LRC, has included a review of the compensation scheme as one of the projects in its forthcoming work programme, which I welcome as an opportunity to examine in some detail the long established scheme for providing compensation to people who suffer injury as a result of criminal activity.

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