The report by Dr Peter Bacon on the proposed Personal Injuries Assessment Board takes the question of compensation for injuries out of the context of mutual blame by various interest groups, and places it in the broader context of Ireland's philosophical approach to provision for victims of accidents.
The report was commissioned by the Bar Council - and its constituency obviously has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, or as much of it as possible. But Dr Bacon's independence as an economic analyst is well-established, and his conclusions cannot lightly be dismissed.
He points out that Ireland is firmly wedded to a private model of injury compensation. In many European countries, and especially those where personal injuries assessment boards operate, the victims of injury have both their medical treatment and, usually, their loss of income met by the social security and healthcare systems. Inevitably, insurance costs there are lower than here.
To have a similar system here would cost an estimated €2.9 billion annually, amounting to a 10 per cent increase in taxation. Successive governments have set their faces against such comprehensive social security provision, and this is fully supported by employers' organisations, and, indeed, the insurance industry.
But Dr Bacon points out that employers cannot have it both ways. It is not possible to have low taxation and a low level of publicly-funded provision for accident victims, along with low insurance premiums. If there is not provision for compensation in one way, there must be in another.
Our system depends on individuals going to court both to establish liability in personal injuries cases, and to establish the appropriate level of compensation. Such compensation - which can run to seven figures - sometimes seems high. But it takes into account the almost total absence of public provision for those severely handicapped, as well as potential loss of earnings, pain and suffering. This system does produce apparent inequities. People with similar degrees of disability can have widely differing levels of provision, depending on outcomes of court cases.
Dr Bacon's report urges that we look beyond the narrow issue of legal costs to the broader question of finding efficient mechanisms for delivering compensation. The role of the legal profession in this process should not escape scrutiny. But the broader issues also deserve full consideration.