Kathleen O'Meara (Labour)

I move amendment No. 11:

In page 8, subsection (1), line 19, to delete "2" and substitute "4".

This amendment deals with the letter of claim, to which the Minister referred earlier. The person intending to bring an action has not more than two months to lodge the letter of claim. The section states that the two months should be not later than two months after the date of accrual of the cause of action which, to be clear, I presume means the date the incident actually occurred, or the date of knowledge of the person in respect of the cause of the action concerned.

Two months is an extraordinarily short period of time in which to lodge a letter of claim and this amendment seeks to substitute four months for two months even though four months is also a very short period of time. We know the Minister's intention is to ensure the process is speeded up and that the defendant is made aware of a letter having been lodged. The section also provides that, where the plaintiff has failed to comply with the section in respect of the two months timeframe, there is a considerable penalty. This is a significant and important section and my comments coincide with the intention of the legislation. As the Minister pointed out, we all welcomed the legislation, but the amendment seeks to ensure that it is fundamentally fair. In that context, by any objective standards, two months is a very short period of time in which to lodge a letter.

Two months after the date of knowledge of the incident or injury is still a very short period of time in which to put together a letter of claim. I am not a lawyer but I would have thought that in many cases a fair deal of work would be involved in lodging a claim. Therefore, in order to give the genuine claimant a fair crack of the whip, I would have thought that four months is a better option than two.