John O'Mahony (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and commend Senator Lawlor on bringing forward this Bill.

I support the thrust and principle of the Bill. I am not a legal expert and I cannot speak on the constitutionality or anything else. The general thrust and principle of it is without doubt.

It is unacceptable that the personal injury payouts continue to increase at a phenomenal rate and are totally out of line, as Senator Lawlor outlined in his contribution, with the rest of Europe. As for why this is the case, there probably are other factors. I am not aware of the minutiae. There is no doubt insurance companies have many questions to answer because of the spiralling premiums. We all have plenty of examples of that. The insurance companies are not losing money but are making handsome profits.

Other factors have been mentioned, such as levies and fraud. My observation on the fraud issue is that more cases seem to have been thrown out in recent times. I very much welcome this because previous awards were mind-boggling - not only their amount but the fact that awards were made in certain cases at all. I welcome the fact that more fraudulent cases seem to have been thrown out in recent times.

I was interested in the contribution of Senator Clifford-Lee, who has left the Chamber. She accused Senator Lawlor of being populist and seeking headlines. There is a saying I will not repeat here because it might be unparliamentary. The Senator herself is certainly a dab hand at both of those topics. As somebody who observes headline seekers in both politics and sport, I note that the Senator has starred in that area. Perhaps she has left the Chamber to seek a few more headlines.