16 Jul 2018
Posted by Barry Aldworth 
Personal injury awards in Ireland are viewed as being too high by a majority of motorists, according to recent research.
In response to a survey of over 5,000 motorists undertaken by AA Car Insurance, 57.88% of those strongly agreed that court awards for whiplash injuries in Ireland were unjustly high. Meanwhile, a further 21.80% of respondents partially agreed that compensation for whiplash injuries needs to be lowered. In recent years, the motoring organisation has highlighted that the lottery aspect of court awards for personal injuries has played a major role in rising motor insurance premiums.
“The motor insurance crisis first truly kicked off in 2015 and since that time we’ve seen a lot of promises from government to intervene, but not enough action. Court awards for personal injury claims are not the only reason insurance premiums have increased, but the current lottery system is not one which can be tolerated any longer and one which is clearly frustrating motorists,” Conor Faughnan, AA Director of Consumer Affairs stated. “Among the government’s actions to tackle rising premiums was a promise to assess payouts, and specifically whiplash awards, in Ireland and how they compared to other countries where awards for these injuries are on average much lower. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any follow-through on what to do after this assessment was completed and court awards are still in many cases grossly out of line with the gravity of the injury suffered.”
“For almost three years know the AA has been highlighting that the simple solution is to strengthen the Book of Quantum and the Personal Injuries Board. A stronger Personal Injuries Board will reduce the number of cases going to court, while if we can get the Book of Quantum to a position where members of the judiciary are satisfied with it, the disparity we often see between court awards and the original Personal Injuries Board recommendation will greatly shrink, meaning less people chancing their arm in court in the hopes of a bigger payout.”
However, the survey also found that when whiplash injuries are excluded, almost three quarters of motorists at least partially agree that personal injury awards remain too high.
When asked for their opinions of court awards relating to non-whiplash injuries, 47.14% of respondents strongly agreed that such payouts in Ireland are too high, with a further 24.52% partially agreeing with this message.
“When we think of exaggerated or spurious personal injury claims, most of our minds tend to go to whiplash first, although that’s not to say that legitimate cases of whiplash injury do not occur. However, the problem with court awards in Ireland extends far beyond this specific type of injury. In recent years, despite updates to the Book of Quantum which were designed to eliminate such practice, we have seen cases where final court awards for an injury greatly exceed what would have been recommended by the Personal Injuries Board,” Faughnan added. “This is by no means the only factor contributing to the motor insurance crisis but it certainly plays a role as insurers and ultimately the consumer are forced to either pay inflated injury costs or significant legal bills in defending claims in court. Ultimately we need to reduce the incentive for taking personal injury cases to court and the best way to achieve this is by ensuring consistency between personal injury awards which are offered by the Personal Injuries Board and those offered by the courts.”
