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GAZETTE
M
W
H
DECEMBER 1993
Society Rebuts IBEC Survey
The proposal to cap awards for pain
and suffering in personal injuries
cases, proposed by the Minister of
States for Commerce & Technology,
Seamus Brennan,
TD, received further
media coverage during November
with IBEC, the business and
employers' confederation, supporting
the Minister's proposals. The Law
Society issued a detailed statement
rebutting the IBEC case that claims
against employers were endangering
jobs and reiterated its opposition to a
cap which would unfairly penalise
victims of accidents who suffered
injury through no fault of their own.
Proposal to cap personal injuries
awards
News items in the
Irish Press
and
Irish Independent
of Monday 8
November, 1993, reported on
comments by the Minister of state for
Commerce & Technology, Seamus
Brennan, TD, at the Fianna Fail Ard
Fheis when he vowed not to yield to
"vested interests" opposing his plans
to cap compensation awards. The
Minister said the current level of
insurance premiums operated as a tax
on employment.
A report issued by IBEC, the business
and employers' confederation, of a
survey of the experiences of 300 of
their member companies concerning
employers' liability claims received
coverage in all the daily papers of
Monday 15 November, 1993. The
survey showed that on average one in
every eight accidents at work resulted
in a personal injury claim. The
average cost of settling a claim in
court was £21,000 and an out of court
settlement was £13,800. IBEC
expressed support for Minister
Brennan's proposals and claimed that
people were almost being encouraged
to make claims.
Declan Madden,
Director of Specialist Services at
IBEC, was interviewed on "Morning
Ireland" on RTE Radio 1 on 15
November. He said that Irish industry
was no less safe and had no more
accidents then anywhere else, but
Ireland had a much higher level of
claim per accident occurring and that
suggested that there was a lot more at
play than just a lack of safety in the
workplace. He said the legal process
encouraged people to make a claim
and, because there was a nuisance
value in many claims, insurance
companies were encouraged to settle
them.
On RTE radio "News at One"
programme on 15 November,
Tony
Briscoe,
Head of Health & Safety
Division of IBEC said that IBEC
supported the proposal by Seamus
Brennan to cap injuries awards. IBEC
was not concerned, he said, with
claims where there was genuine injury
and liability, but was concerned about
the extent to which opportunistic
claims were arising which were in
nobody's interest. On the same
programme,
John Maguire
of the
Construction Industry Federation
suggested that good safety auditing,
reducing the severity and frequency of
claims, would, of itself, automatically
bring down the cost of insurance.
The President of the Society,
Michael
O'Mahony,
responded on behalf of the
Law Society. He said that the
implication of the IBEC statement
was that only victims of serious
injuries should be permitted to claim.
It was unfair that a vulnerable, injured
person, should be asked to carry a
subsidy for the high cost of insurance
and employers' liability premiums. He
said it was a simplistic approach to
assume that if awards were reduced
the cost of insurance premiums would
come down and he noted that the
insurance industry had not confirmed
a correlation between the two.
The Minister of State for Commerce
& Technology,
Seamus Brennan,
was
also interviewed. He said the cost of
Seamus Brennan, TD, Minister of State for
Commerce & Technology, argues that the
cost of insurance is affecting job creation.
insurance was directly affecting job
creation because many companies
could not get employers' liability
cover and he knew of one instance
where 40% of the wages bill was
being spent on employers' liability
premiums. He said that, as yet, the
Government had taken no decision on
the matter but he was committed to
introducing a cap on the level of
awards. He said he took on board the
Society's point that there was no
simplistic solution but, nonetheless, if
the levels of awards paid out in
Ireland were at the same level to those
in the European countries with which
we compete, over £100m less per
annum would be paid out. The
Minister said that he was willing and
intended to discuss the matter with the
Law Society. He was asking for a
trade-off i.e. asking the public to limit
their right to high levels of awards
and to set that against the common
good and the common benefit to
industry and motorists of having
reduced insurance costs.
The
Evening Herald
of 15 November,
1993, also reported on the IBEC
survey. An article in the
Irish Press
of
16 November, 1993, entitled
"Lawyers Angry at Plan to Cap Injury
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