Details on €2bn in medical claims sought by Pac

The value of claims against the State for medical negligence is currently €2billion, and rising by €300million a year, the Public Accounts Committee has heard.

At a meeting on Thursday the committee agreed to ask the State Claims Agency for a list of the cases broken down by numbers taken against individual medical practitioners, and by hospital.

Committee chairman Sean Fleming said it was not intended to publicly name individual medical practitioners, but the committee wanted to know how many health professionals were defending multiple cases while continuing to perform procedures.

Mr Fleming said the State Claims Agency would be asked for details of all cases where the claim is for more than €1 million.

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Mr Fleming said "Just think, if the health service had even half that €2 billion, what they could do with it."

The Vicky Phelan case against the State over the cervical cancer scandal was struck out, but she settled with a US cervical testing laboratory* for €2.5 million. It is understood the number of claims for medical negligence against the State is very large.

The committee is also to ask for the number of cases taken against each hospital in a bid to understand where the majority of incidents that give rise to claims were originating.

Mr Fleming said “Just think, if the health service had even half that €2 billion, what they could do with it.”

Proposing that the committee seek details on the number of cases by each hospital, Catherine Murphy TD said the problem was “not just individuals. You keep hearing the hospitals names mentioned”.

Catherine Connolly TD said the costs of each claim were excessive. She said when a claim is made, apart from the hospital review, there was often an external, independent review carried out, and the costs of this level of investigation were significant.

HEA resignation

The committee, in its afternoon session, also heard from outgoing chief executive of the Higher Education Authority (HEA) who resigned from his post just over a year and half after being appointed.

Dr Graham Love, who was appointed chief executive in January 2017 said his resignation followed the realisation that the HEA as set up in legislation, could not fulfil its role as a strategic developer and regulator of the sector.

He said “difficulties” had emerged with the Department of Education in the interpretation of the HEA role.

He told David Cullinane TD the “key” attraction of the job had been the strategic development of the higher education sector. The HEA had been set up under legislation in 1971 and and its role expanded as a regulator of the third-level sector in 2013. However there were areas such as the holding of investigations that were outside its remit according to legal advice, and there were issues of “role clarity” between it and the Department of Education and Skills, he said. “We don’t simply have the power to do what is expected of a regulatory body” he said.

Asked by Mr Cullinane if there was a “turf war” between the authority and the department, Mr Love said there was “confusion in parts”. Asked if the department was being precious, he said; “I don’t want to refer to it as preciousness but there have been times when it has been difficult”.

Referring specifically to an investigation at Waterford Institute of Technology, on how spin-out companies co-located within WIT were commercialised, Mr Love said the State’s legal advice was that a question had arisen about whether the HEA had the authority to conduct such an investigation and whether the report’s publication could expose the authority to legal challenge.

*This article was edited on October 21st, 2018