Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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71. To ask the Minister for Finance the amount paid out in damages in non-medical negligence cases by the State Claims Agency in 2020; the top five amounts paid out; and the nature of each case. [3164/21]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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With respect to claims under the management of the State Claims Agency (SCA), I am informed that, as of 31 December 2020, Damages payments with respect to General claims paid in 2020 by the SCA on behalf of delegated State Authorities and Healthcare enterprises amounted to €42,825,178. Please note that clinical care claims are excluded from this response, however the term Damages payments can include both General Damages and Special Damages.

The State Claims Agency has prepared the below table in response to the information requested by the Deputy.

For information, the incident/hazard category is a high level classification used to describe the cause of an incident. It is based on international recognised hazard classifications which have been further developed to denote hazards which can have a direct or indirect impact on a person or property. This high-level classification is a grouping together of like type hazards which are broken down in further detail in the sub-hazard type which provides a further breakdown so that more specific detail can be recorded.

Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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72. To ask the Minister for Finance the amount paid out by the State Claims Agency in plaintiff legal costs and its own legal costs in non-medical negligence cases by the State in 2020. [3165/21]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I am informed by the State Claims Agency (SCA) that, as of 31 December 2020, the total plaintiff legal costs and agency legal costs paid on all claims being managed by the SCA under the General Indemnity Scheme between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020 was €35,572,220.

The SCA have supplied the following table to show the breakdown of these costs:

Please note that this figure relates only to claims under the General Indemnity Scheme and exclude all claims relating to clinical care. The legal costs sum includes VAT, and in the case of plaintiff’s costs, the sum shown also includes payments made in respect of experts retained by plaintiffs to support their cases.