Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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173. To ask the Minister for Finance the total amount of funding provided by the insurance compensation fund to Quinn Insurance to date; and the current estimate of the overall amount of funding to be provided, including that forecast to be provided in future. [24431/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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In 2010,  at the request of the Central Bank of Ireland, Joint Administrators were appointed by the High Court under the Insurance No. 2 Act 1983 to Quinn Insurance Limited (QIL) because of concerns about the solvency position of that firm.   To date, a total of €1,118m has been drawn down from the Insurance Compensation Fund by the Joint Administrators.

The Joint Administrators, when presenting their 10^threport to the High Court in July 2012, indicated that the potential call on the ICF could be up to €1.65bn. The Joint Administrators pointed out in their report that if they were to remove most of the accounting adjustments and use a "best estimate" calculation, then the call on the fund is likely to be in the range of €1.1bn to €1.3bn rather than the €1.65bn for which they have provided.

The latest update from the Joint administrators to officials from my Department indicate that they are increasingly confident that the total drawdown will be in that lower range.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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174. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide an update on the litigation by the administrators of Quinn Insurance against PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was commenced on 15 February 2012, and involves a claim for damages of approximately €1 billion in respect of alleged audit failings by PwC at Quinn Insurance. [24432/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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In July 2012 the Joint Administrators of Quinn Insurance Limited (QIL) informed the High Court that they were considering taking legal action for negligence against the former auditors of QIL, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The proceedings were admitted to the Commercial Court on 29 July 2013 and QIL provided its statement of claim to PricewaterhouseCoopers on 24^thSeptember 2013.  The Commercial Court is case-managing the proceedings and the most recent directions issued by the Court anticipate that PricewaterhouseCoopers will provide its defence to QIL by 1 August 2014.

As this case is before the Courts I do not propose to make any further statement now.