News & Insights
Compensation delay to crash victims criticised
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey has criticised the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland for delays in paying compensation to victims of road crashes. The MIBI was set up by the Government and Irish motor insurance companies more than 50 years ago to compensate innocent victims of crashes caused by uninsured and unidentified vehicles. But Minister Dempsey […]
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Potholes: 330,000 paid out to drivers in compo
Potholes on Ulster’s roads have cost almost a third of a million pounds in compensation claims over the past three years. According to figures posted on the Assembly’s website the Department of Regional Development, fronted by Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy, has paid out £329,456.12 on personal injury and vehicle damage claims since 2005. Last year […]
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More injury claimants opt for court
ALMOST EUR114m now lies uncollected in claims from the Personal Injuries Assessment Board because injured parties were unhappy with their payouts and have decided to go to court. Up to 40 per cent of claimants are walking away from the Personal Injuries Assessment Board process and deciding to take their chances in the courts instead. […]
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Refused Compensation Claims to Drop
THE number of compensation awards refused by claimants against the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) is expected to drop significantly following the introduction of new legislation, it was predicted yesterday. PIAB chief executive Patricia Byron expressed confidence that the passing of the Personal Injuries Assessment (Amendment) Act further help to push down legal costs associated […]
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PIAB in move to include legal fees in claims
INSURANCE companies who are being sued through the State’s Personal Injuries Assessment Board will be forced to pay the legal costs of "vulnerable" accident victims and others who have difficulty accessing the lawyer-free claims service. In a remarkable u-turn on its zero-tolerance policy of refusing to pay accident victims’ legal fees, the claims agency […]
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No reason to up costs, insurance firms told
October 18 2007 INSURANCE companies claim to have cut motor insurance premiums by up to 10pc this year and have been warned there is little justification for future increases. A survey by consultants Deloitte showed that 80pc of insurers said that they had cut premiums in 2007, the majority by up to 10pc, while one-in-10 […]
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Medical Negligence Limitation Period Reduced to 2 years
Pursuant to Section 7 of the Courts and Civil Liability Act, 2004, the limitation period to pursue a medical negligence action has been reduced from 3 years to 2 years, from the date of knowledge of the medical misadventure event. In short, as soon as you believe that you may have a medical negligence claim, […]
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Govt facing EUR250m bill for personal injury claims
Govt facing €250m bill for personal injury claims The Government is facing a bill of €250m in personal injury claims, according to the latest figures. Three-thousand six hundred people are currently taking cases against the State. 72% of claims involve the prison service, the Garda and the Defence Forces. The annual report of the National […]
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Consultants Seek Medical Court to tackle Litigation
Hospital consultants will ask the government to stem the rising cost of medical litigation by introducing a compensation body modelled on the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB). Finbarr Fitzpatrick, secretary general of the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association (IHCA), said the only way to redress the huge insurance burden on the taxpayer and private consultants was […]
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NI drivers still paying more
Motorists in Northern Ireland are still paying significantly more for car insurance than their UK counterparts, the Automobile Association has said. According to a new insurance comparison given to the BBC by the AA, premiums in NI are at least 10% higher than the UK’s accident and theft hotspots. In the past, crime and civil […]
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Insurers should pass on savings to consumers
The chairperson of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB), Dorothea Dowling, confirmed the public’s suspicion that insurance companies were not passing on all savings to consumers, despite lower insurance for motorists at present. She put it rather more diplomatically to the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business yesterday when she said that insurance companies […]
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Consumer body calls for monitoring of legal profession
An independent regulatory body to oversee the legal profession must now be established, the Consumers Association of Ireland has said, The association slammed recent revelations that certain solicitors, who having been paid their full fees by the Residential Institutions Redress Board, allegedly double-charged vulnerable victims of abuse. As many as 80 complaints of over-charging have […]
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