Army body disputes Dail report on deafness

Pdforra, the Defence Forces association, has rejected as "scaremongering" a Dail report which estimates the eventual cost of …

Pdforra, the Defence Forces association, has rejected as "scaremongering" a Dail report which estimates the eventual cost of Army deafness claims at £5.55 billion.

Mr John Lucey, general secretary of PDFORRA, said the total cost should be less than one-tenth of that figure. He added that many of the statistics contained in the interim report published on Thursday by the Committee of Public Accounts "don't stand up"

"We estimate claims will not be higher than £20,000 to £25,000 on average. In total, the cost to the Exchequer will be about £500 million," he said.

The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, described the estimate as "absurd" and said the total cost to the Exchequer should not even reach £1 billion.

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"It would be intolerable if that was the case. The Army would be decimated. It would cease to exist if the costs were that great," he said.

The committee made its calculation on the basis of all 150,000 potential claimants receiving an average award, including costs, of £37,000.

Mr Lucey welcomed in principle the report's recommendation of a special compensation procedure, separate from the civil courts. However, he said, it should not be at the expense of removing the right to pursue a case through the courts.

"We're concerned that it might impinge on the right of a soldier to seek compensation in the same way an ordinary citizen can."

Mr Lucey dismissed as "nonsense" the report's claim that the flood of compensation claims had been fuelled by the Defence (Amendment) Act, 1990, which gave Army members the right to join representative bodies.

Comdt Brian O'Keefe, general secretary of the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers (RACO), welcomed "the broad thrust" of the report.

He said it was "rightly critical of the Department of Defence strategy of contesting claims to the steps of the courts, and then settling them. This has been a major contributor to the scale of the problem."

Comdt O'Keefe said the report also recognised "the huge level of inertia" that existed in the Department of Defence between 1995 and 1997.

The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, said the Government has saved up to £100 million on deafness claims since it came into office.

"We have achieved that by fighting more cases and by having a few high-profile cases struck down with costs awarded against the claimant," he said.

In 1996 claimants received damages, excluding costs, averaging £35,000. Average payments fell to £25,000 last October and to £18,000 last month.

Mr Smith said recommendations on a hearing handicap assessment will be available shortly from the expert group set up by the Department of Health.

He also said work is at an advanced stage on legislation to ban excessive advertising by solicitors "who are not just ambulance chasing but are driving the ambulance."

The proposal to ban such advertising was criticised yesterday by a Fianna Fail councillor and solicitor, Mr John Hussey of Fermoy, who is advertising in Britain for army deafness claimants.

Joe Humphreys

Joe Humphreys

Joe Humphreys is an Assistant News Editor at The Irish Times and writer of the Unthinkable philosophy column