Solicitors in deafness cases urged to cut fees

The Minister for Defence has made a plea to solicitors involved in Army deafness cases to cut their fees by 50 per cent. Mr Smith said legal firms handling large numbers of similar deafness claims should be able to charge lower fees.

Following a meeting with the Minister yesterday, the Law Society said it would consider Mr Smith's proposal. However, it challenged him to substantiate his claims that there are solicitors engaged in misconduct in the handling of Army deafness claims. The president of the society, Mr Laurence K. Shields, expressed concern at the Minister's repeated public claims of misconduct and called on him to provide evidence for the society to investigate.

The High Court yesterday rejected a claim by a bandsman who alleged he suffered loss of hearing because he was exposed to a "dangerously high level of noise".

Ms Justice McGuinness dismissed the action by Mr Charles O'Neill, of Newbridge, Co Kildare, who claimed he was exposed to hazardously loud and excessive noise while a member of the Army Band at the Curragh.

Mr Smith had earlier renewed his criticism of some personal injury solicitors. "The ambulance chasing, seminars, trawling through hospital beds, placing advertisements outside Beaumont Hospital - all of that has to be changed."

A single legal firm handling 100 compensation cases would earn legal fees of £1.25 million, he pointed out. "When I get 40 cases from one firm of solicitors, all of them identical except for the change of name, I'm entitled to ask questions," he told RTE radio.

Mr Smith also suggested the Constitution might need to be changed to protect the taxpayers from being "open to the whims of very bright people who can blast open gold mines for themselves". The records of retired Army people who were not making claims had been "wrecked" and "sacrificed on the altar of greed" by the controversy, he said.

He also revealed further details of the "avalanche" of cases the Department is facing. One former member of the Defence Forces was claiming compensation for his arthritis, which he blamed on marching practice. In another case, a soldier was suing for compensation over an ulcer. Another man who crashed into a bollard when he was riding a bicycle without a light is also suing.

So far, 11,500 cases have been lodged, and 600 new cases are coming in a month. Mr Smith estimated the cost to the taxpayer was "the guts of" £500 million.

Meanwhile, the Department of Defence last night rejected a call by the representative body for members of the Defence Forces, PDFORRA, for a judicial inquiry into the escalating bill resulting from the claims. A spokesman said the Minister was interested in "looking to the future, not in raking over the past".

PDFORRA had earlier complained that its members were being "pilloried, embarrassed and humiliated" for exercising their legal and constitutional right to make a claim.

It also criticised what it called "ongoing efforts" to present the claims made by soldiers as bogus. "This ploy simply isn't credible, as the vast majority of claimants are showing clear medical evidence of significant damage to hearing, and at the end of long and very extensive legal wrangling, most are being offered compensation," said Mr Pat Grogan, president of PDFORRA.

But Mr Smith said: "I'm faced with the kind of bill for soldiers, in terms of compensation for deafness, that hasn't happened in any other country in the world, even those that were at war.

"I have a responsibility to the taxpayer to sort out the genuine cases and at the same time to make sure that resources are not diverted away which are desperately needed for real, genuine handicap that has been left out of the system for far too long."

He described the legal advice given in 1994 by the Attorney General (Mr Harry Whelehan SC), as "in effect to put up your hands in the air. I don't accept that kind of surrender in those circumstances".

Mr Whelehan said last night that he could not reveal details of legal advice he gave to the Government, adding that the advice he had given related only to cases which had been initiated while he was in office. Mr Whelehan left office as Attorney General in November, 1994. .

The Minister for Defence at the time, Mr Andrews, said there was never any "hands-up" policy in relation to the claims.

Mrs Mary Fenlon, wife of a former FCA soldier whose case was dismissed last Monday, said yesterday on Today with Pat Kenny that her family had been humiliated publicly. Bandsman court case: Page 6