Small business lobby group Isme says Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan’s support for an increase in the scale of personal injury awards is a capitulation to vested legal interests.
It says the move undermines years of work to bring down insurance costs for SMEs and consumers.
Mr O’Callaghan is due to bring a proposal to Cabinet next week to raise personal injury awards by 17 per cent on the back of a recommendation from the Judicial Council.
The board of the Judicial Council is required by law to review the guidelines every three years and proposed last December that payments should rise by 16.7 per cent.
That recommendation was adopted by the council of the State’s judges in late January and passed over to Mr O’Callaghan, who must put the amendments before the Houses of the Oireachtas for approval.
ISME say the increase would lead to increases in insurance premiums for both businesses and consumers and “would take money directly from small businesses and into the pockets of lawyers”.
“This proposed increase is indefensible,” said Isme chief executive Neil McDonnell. “It rewards a highly profitable legal industry and punishes honest employers, retailers and community organisations.
“Insurance costs have not fallen following previous reforms, and now the Government wants to undo the little progress that has been made,” he said.
Isme says the judiciary should be removed from any involvement in setting the level of awards which, it argues, should be delegated to an independent expert body such as the Personal Injuries Resolution Board or the Workplace Relations Commission.
“Not alone is there no justification for an increase in personal injuries awards, but the final report of the Personal Injuries Commission suggests that awards should be reduced by at least a further 30 per cent,” Mr McDonnell said.
He noted that Ireland already has much higher personal injury payouts than other comparable countries and 14 times more personal injury cases than England and Wales, despite a population that is just one -twelfth of those two countries.
Isme is already in conflict with Government over changes in the Defamation Amendment Bill, now being prepared for Cabinet, which, it says, has been stripped of its most meaningful reforms and will fail to protect small businesses.
“The Defamation Amendment Bill as currently drafted is utterly inadequate, and requires at a minimum the insertion of a serious harm test, a cap on damages and penalisation of SLAPP lawsuits,” Isme says. SLAPP lawsuits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation, are lawsuits whose purpose is to intimidate or silence another party.
