Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 10 February 2022
6. Deputy Seán Haughey asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will report on the work of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board during 2021; the plans of the board for 2022; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6819/22]
View answerDeputy Lahart is taking this question on behalf of Deputy Haughey.
The question is in regard to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB. I am looking to get a report from the Minister on the work of PIAB last year and the plans for PIAB this year. In that context, I welcome the fact the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, secured agreement yesterday to draft his personal injuries resolution board Bill, so the question is timely.
I thank Deputy Lahart for taking this question. PIAB was established in 2004 to assess personal injuries compensation in a timely and cost-efficient manner.
The board has delivered major benefits by providing a low-cost, quick and fair option in injury compensation. It annually saves tens of millions of euro that would otherwise be paid in costs by parties, and ultimately be a cost borne by policyholders. The work of the board in 2021 will be set out in its annual report, which will be published later this year. In the interim, I have been informed by PIAB that 21,410 applications were received by the board in 2021, comprising 11,409 motor claims, 5,774 public liability claims and 4,227 employer liability claims. PIAB’s provisional figures show that the board completed 8,024 assessments in 2021, of which 4,748 were made since the introduction of the new personal injuries guidelines.
In 2021, there was a significant change in the operations of PIAB arising from the commencement of the personal injuries guidelines. The board reported in October 2021 that under the new guidelines the average total award was €14,223, a 40% decrease compared with 2020. Of the cases assessed, 71% of awards were less than €15,000 compared to 30% of awards made by the board in 2020. In 2022, I intend to enhance and strengthen the agency to facilitate an increase in the resolution of personal injury claims. Yesterday, I published the general scheme of the personal injuries resolution board Bill 2022. The scheme proposes to amend the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Acts, 2003 to 2019, in a number of ways, including giving PIAB a new function to offer mediation as a means of resolving a claim. PIAB will retain claims of a wholly psychological nature. PIAB will deepen its analysis and public information roles. We will also strengthen the discretion of the courts regarding costs in litigation.
That is a good reply and some of the figures in that are positive. Can the millions of euro saved be quantified? Is there any figure for that or does the Minister of State have any sense of how much has been saved by the State and individual consumers in premiums due to the work of PIAB? What has been the general impact of those reduced awards? Almost three-quarters of the awards are now less than €15,000, as the Minister of State noted in his reply. That is significant and consumers are looking for the knock-on effect of that. He said that PIAB is retaining claims of a wholly psychological nature. Could he elaborate on what that means? He also mentioned that he has had ongoing discussions with PIAB over the past year, leading up to the drafting of this Bill, which is welcome. What issues did the board raise with him in those discussions?
In the context of drafting this legislation, it was not just PIAB that we engaged with. We engaged extensively with key stakeholders, including the Alliance for Insurance Reform and community groups. We had a public consultation to which 240 people made submissions and that informed the drafting of this legislation. Some of the provisions we are making are due to requests and suggestions that have been made, including on cases of a wholly psychological nature. At the moment those cases cannot be assessed by PIAB so that is something new it will be do. I cannot quantify what the total cost savings have been but I can give the example of cases going through PIAB. The average legal cost associated with them is €841. Of the cases going through litigation, the average legal costs are €16,064. The savings in legal fees are immense. It is 15 times more costly to go through litigation than through PIAB. We need many more cases going through PIAB because ultimately those costs are passed onto policyholders.
That is welcome. PIAB is effective and what the Minister of State is proposing in the Bill is to expand its remit so that it can deal with more cases. Some of these cases are of a psychological nature, which PIAB does not currently deal with as I understand it from what he said. That is also welcome and he essentially said it has resulted in a fifteen-fold reduction, or close to it. It is probably less than that if the average PIAB claim is €800 compared to legal recourse, which costs €16,000 or €17,000. That is welcome. I would like to be able to go back and give good news to organisations in my community such as Kilnamanagh Community Centre, which has seen its premium rise by €10,000. We all have had representations from similar groups. PIAB is bound to be good news for them. How soon can we see the impact on the ground in respect of premiums and what progress has been made on that?
The insurance issue will not be resolved by PIAB alone. We have embarked on a cross-government approach that has been led by the Minister and we have made some good inroads in this area. For example, an office to promote competition has been established, because we need competition in the market for venues such as the one the Deputy alluded to in his constituency. The scope of the national claims information database has been widened so that we have the key information on employer and public liability and a fraud unit has also been established in An Garda Síochána. Most importantly, the personal injury guidelines have commenced and we have seen a significant reduction in compensation payouts because of that. Thankfully, premiums are falling. The data to date has shown that motor insurance premiums have fallen almost 20% in the past two years but we want to see premiums fall further and we want to see them fall in public liability. The best way we can do that is to keep our claims down. The establishment and widened remit of PIAB will help to ensure that happens.
