Martin says PIAB has saved €51m

The Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) has saved €51 million on awards totalling €228 million compared to the old litigation system, according to Minister for Enterprise Micheál Martin.

He said the board was assessing many claims "three times faster and four times cheaper" than through the adversarial litigation system, and accident victims, business and consumers "should see further reductions in their insurance premiums".

Of about 13,300 assessments issued, "7,533 have been accepted, 4,707 have been rejected and authorities to proceed to litigation and responses are awaited on the balance", said Mr Martin.

Some of the rejected assessments "will have been resolved since PIAB involvement and others will proceed to the courts".

Administrative and assessment costs were about 7 per cent of the total, compared to 46 per cent previously, according to the Minister, who said that a €15,000 award under the old system would have resulted in €7,500 in additional costs, but under the PIAB, it was down to €1,350.

In reply to a written parliamentary question from Labour's Waterford TD Brian O'Shea, Mr Martin said costs now averaged at about a €1,383 flat fee.

Up to the end of June this year, "the PIAB had made actual savings to date of €51 million on awards totalling €228 million when compared with the old, unwieldy adversarial and litigation-based system".

In 2003 an estimated 32,000 personal injury cases went through the court system compared to 15,900 currently, and this had "freed up" valuable time.

The PIAB was set up in 2004 following concerns about rising insurance premiums because of the high legal cost of personal injury claims and the time it took to deal with them in the courts.

The board, which currently employs 81 staff and will recruit four more, is an independent statutory body which assesses the amount of compensation due to a person who has suffered a personal injury in cases where liability is uncontested.