Government to receive €45m in indemnity deal

THE GOVERNMENT seems set to receive about €45 million as part of a settlement with a medical indemnity company over who should pay for the cost of claims made against doctors who were previously covered by the organisation.

The Irish Times reported last May that negotiations to settle the protracted litigation between the State and the UK-based Medical Defence Union (MDU) were at an advanced stage. Highly placed sources said at the time that firm proposals were on the table to resolve the row.

Last week, a table included in a draft report of the latest European Commission review of Ireland under the bailout programme set out that the Government would receive €45 million from the MDU. This figure was among a number of specified measures for containing spending pressures in the health service.

The table cited the “Irish authorities” and “Commission service estimates” for the figures set out in the table.

The Department of Health said in a statement: “The settlement proposals with the MDU have not yet been finalised and must be approved by Government. The department is not in a position to comment further at this stage.”

The State has been paying the cost of claims since the MDU declined to provide cover for Irish consultants several years ago.

For decades, the State paid or subsidised the premium payments made by doctors in Ireland to the MDU, one of two UK-based private companies which provided medical indemnity cover to the medical profession in this State.

However, the organisation is not an insurance company but a mutual organisation and the payment of claims against members is discretionary.

The row dates back to the introduction of a clinical indemnity scheme by the government nearly a decade ago.

The scheme, which is operated by the State Claims Agency, manages clinical negligence claims against public hospitals and doctors.

At the time of its introduction, the then government decided it would have no retrospective effect.

The scheme came into effect for hospital consultants from February 2004.