The Government has so far paid €273.4 million arising from Defence Forces deafness claims, the Minister for Defence revealed. Mr Smith said the figure included €91.3 million in plaintiffs' legal costs.
He said 16,698 claims had been received by his Department from current and former members of the Defence Forces by the end of last month.
Some 328 claims had been determined in court, and 14,681 had been disposed of out of court, mainly through settlement. This meant that 1,689 claims were outstanding at the end of last month.
He said a much more definitive health and safety regime had been in place in the Defence Forces in recent years.
"Arrangements in this regard are continually reviewed. I would like to say that we will finish dealing with these claims soon. The back of the process has been broken, and we should be almost finished by the end of 2004."
He said the number of claims being received weekly had decreased considerably.
The Fine Gael spokesman on defence, Mr Dinny McGinley, said the affair was a sad episode in the history of the Defence Forces. "It is important that we do not have a repeat of it."
