The soaring costs of dealing with medical negligence cases over the past five years has helped push the bill at the State Claims Agency (SCA) across all claims to over €1.68bn since its inception in 2001.

The role of the SCA is currently under the spotlight as a result of the High Court action taken terminally ill Co Limerick woman, Vicky Phelan against the HSE and a US lab where the SCA represented the HSE’s interests in the court case and eventual court settlement.

Now, new figures provided by the Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe show that since its inception in 2001, the SCA has paid out €1.683bn – or on average of over €96m a year – in damages, legal costs and expert costs.

The bigger driver of the SCA’s costs are medical negligence cases and the bill last year in dealing with medical negligence cases reached a record €285m in 2017 including €207.82m paid out in damages.

Last year as part of the €285m total, the SCA also paid out costs of €48.2m to lawyers of those taking the cases, €23m in costs for lawyers representing the SCA and €6.2m in expert costs.

View our own Medical Negligence page here.

Source: Irish Examiner