Class actions: No formal structure exists in Irish law for the pursuit of class actions seeking damages, and this has proved costly both to litigants and to the State - and very profitable to lawyers, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent
There have, however, been instances where one case has been used to set a precedent for others in similar circumstances. This happened when the Irish Government failed to implement a 1978 EU directive providing equal social welfare payments for married women and men until December 1986.
Some 11,200 women instituted proceedings claiming the money owed from when the directive should have been implemented, and a single case was brought to the European Court of Justice, where it was successful. The State then settled 2,700 cases which appeared to be similar. Eventually, it announced payments to all those owed.
The classic example of a situation where a class action could have arisen was in relation to Army deafness, where many hundreds of cases were heard, most of them sharing essential facts, with each case producing the same evidence over and over before, often, the same judges. Eventually a formula was arrived at for paying compensation to the people affected.
However, provision for class actions, or multi-party litigation as it is called here, is on the way following a report from the Law Reform Commission last year. This examined the current situation, and made a range of recommendations to allow for this type of litigation.
None of the recommendations involves any legislative changes, other than a small, single-paragraph amendment to the Civil Legal Aid Act to allow those eligible for legal aid to have funding for their participation in class actions.
The rest of the recommendations can be catered for by changes in the rules of court.
According to the Law Reform Commission report, people could "opt in" to class actions seeking damages for injuries caused by a specified party, like a pharmaceutical or a tobacco company, or the State. A judge would, on request, then certify the case as a multi-party action.
The Commission recommended that class actions be based on common issues of fact or law, rather than strict uniformity. A representative or lead case would be selected, with a single legal representative, who would be approved by the court.
Individuals could only remove themselves from the action with the approval of the court.
The costs of the action would be shared by the group, though in successful cases the party sued would bear the costs, as they do at present.
However, all this remains in the future.
In the meantime, any group of Irish litigants who consider themselves injured by a company based in another jurisdiction, though also operating here, have no alternative but to go to the other jurisdiction to pursue their claim.