An interim report from the Injuries Board has shown an increase of 4.1 percent in the number of personal injury claims in Ireland submitted to the authority for assessment.
In the first six months of 2012, the Injuries Board received 14,669 applications for assessment – the majority of which were for traffic accident claims (59.4 percent) with the remainder comprised of public liability claims (27.2 percent) and work injury claims (13.4 percent).
Although fears of an anticipated spike in personal injury claims in Ireland due to the “recessionary environment” did not materialise, the Chief Executive of InjuriesBoard.ie – Patricia Byron – noted that there had been a tendency for more claimants to pursue lower value claims.
She also acknowledged that information on the Internet had also had an impact on the number of personal injury claims in Ireland – an indication that people in Ireland are becoming more aware of their rights to claim personal injury compensation when they have been injured in an accident for which they were not to blame.
The proportion of Injury Board assessments which were accepted by claimants and respondents remained steady at approximately 35 percent, while there was a slight decrease in the average value of Injuries Board assessments – from 21,086 Euros in 2011 to 21,049 Euros during the first six months of 2012 – which was attributable to a slightly lower volume of work injury claims.
Ms Byron also highlighted that there had been an increase in issue-specific applications for assessment which the Injuries Board were unable to process – most notably individual applications submitted by members of the Irish Thalidomide Association and those making DePuy compensation claims after the recall of the faulty metal-on-metal hip replacements.
Commenting on these two issue-specific cases, Ms Byron said “Currently when multiple issue-specific claims first arise, InjuriesBoard.ie is obliged to release these cases to the Courts until a compensation benchmark has been established. As litigation costs typically add over 50% to the cost of underlying awards this can mean additional costs of €500,000 per €1million in awards, even in circumstances where liability is not in dispute. Assessing these cases through a non adversarial process, such as InjuriesBoard.ie, could result in substantial savings.”