The amounts paid out to date are: £2.04 million in respect of 124 court awards; £41.5 million in respect of 1,745 out of court settlements; and £12.25 million in respect of 1,401 claims where legal costs have been paid to date. The total cost to date is close to £56 million.
Administrative costs are currently estimated at approximately: £750,000 per year for staff and overheads in the Department of Defence; £850,000 per year for staff and overheads in respect of the Defence Forces; and £795,000 per year for staff and overheads in the Chief State Solicitor's Office. A total estimate for administrative costs is, therefore, £2,395,000 per year.
With regard to proposals to establish a compensation tribunal, I am most anxious to ensure that genuine cases of hearing disability are compensated as speedily as possible, and I believe the most effective way of achieving this is by way of some form of out of court settlement procedure. This has been a long-standing position of mine. Following the judgment in the first Green Book test case in May last — Greene v. Minister for Defence — I had hoped that proposals could be brought to Government for approval to establish a compensation mechanism outside the courts. However, the outcome of a second case in July — Hanley v. Minister for Defence — brought huge cost implications to bear on this proposal.
The recent Supreme Court decision on the case of Smith v. Minister for Defence and Others, while very welcome on a number of counts, has not overturned the Hanley jurisprudence or the tariffs which that case has applied to Army hearing loss compensation claims generally.
The Hanley case is being appealed to the Supreme Court and the question of establishing a formal out of court mechanism will be considered again following the determination of that Supreme Court appeal. In the meantime I have instructed officials in my Department to endeavour to settle claims informally on an out of court basis where reasonable discounts can be obtained.