It is no surprise that lawyers' groups have been unenthusiastic about the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent.
"The worrying sub-text of all this is that lawyers will move heaven and earth to scupper anything that will reduce Bar earnings." This was the response of Ms Dorothea Dowling, chairwoman of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, to the Bar Council's commissioning of a report on the Personal Injuries Assessment Board last week. The report, by Dr Peter Bacon, concluded that setting up such a board could increase rather than reduce insurance costs.
His report was condemned as "a report commissioned by lawyers for lawyers" by the Irish Insurance Federation. Its spokesman, Mr Martin Long, said: "Everyone in society can't be wrong except the lawyers. They are all avoiding confronting head-on the issue of the cost of claims. It does not cover the profession in glory that it is not honest about the cost of claims."
The federation's figures suggest that every lawyer in the State earned an average of nearly €70,000 from processing insurance claims last year, with €440 million paid out in legal fees.
This figure disguises the reality of the dependence of sections of the legal profession on personal injuries' claims. Many lawyers though do none of this work, working primarily in other areas.
If a person has a car accident or has an accident at work, his or her first port of call will be a solicitor. The claim can be negotiated by a solicitor without any involvement by a barrister. However, barristers are called in to more complex cases and they then conduct the negotiations.
Only 8 per cent of these cases get to court. In about half, liability is not an issue and it is these cases that the Personal Injuries Assessment Board are intended to take out of the legal system.
It is widely acknowledged in the legal profession that personal injuries cases rarely involve difficult points of law, but insurance business is highly sought after at the Bar. The number of solicitors advertising in the Golden Pages stressing that they do personal injuries work testifies to its popularity among them too.
Given the figures involved, it is obvious why. While there are no authoritative figures for the proportion of solicitors and barristers who do the bulk of the personal injuries work, it is unlikely that much of it goes to the big solicitors' firms specialising in corporate law, libel, property or increasingly, family law. Certain barristers work almost exclusively in these areas.
If a quarter of the legal profession concentrates on personal injuries, the individuals involved will earn an average of €240,000 each. High earnings are concentrated among the older members of these professions, so much is at stake for them in the debate over the PIAB.