Personal Injury Claims - Statistics

If you wish to pursue a personal injury claim in Ireland, your solicitor will have to submit your case with the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB). This is a body that regulates personal injury claims in Ireland with the intention of reducing the number of cases going to court. The statistics for 2015 have recently been released and has produced a number of interesting points regarding the type of accidents suffered by people in Ireland.

In 2015, there was an increase of 1.5% in the overall number of personal injury claims submitted with PIAB as opposed to 2014. However, even with this increase, road traffic accident claims were reduced by approximately 1%. This decrease evidently disproves the ‘claiming culture’ for fraudulent road traffic accidents that have allegedly forced the insurance companies to increase premiums. These road traffic accidents do not only include car accident claims but also motorbike accidents and bike accidents making the scope for motor claim’s extremely wide.
In terms of public liability claims, the statistics illustrate that these increased by 3.1%. Public liability accidents can include slipping accidents, tripping accidents or any other injury sustained from the negligence of another in a public place where a duty of care is owed. The most common forms of these cases include slipping on a wet floor that was not properly signposted by the negligent party. Another example of a public liability accident would be tripping over an object that should not have been there and the landowner owed a duty of care to keep the area safe to walk.
The final area of accidents that PIAB deal with is employer liability accidents. This is also referred to as workplace accidents or accidents at work. These types of cases have increased by 8.2 % between 2014 and 2015. The reasoning for this increase can be attributed to the growing numbers of people at work which will logically contribute to an increased amount of workplace accidents. From our experience, we have noticed that workplace accidents in Dublin are the most common; this is largely due to the sheer population and the amount of commuters from Ireland travelling to Dublin for work each day. We have also had quite a few clients from Northern Ireland who have been injured whilst working in Dublin that are eligible to bring workplace accident claims in the Republic of Ireland.
In 2016, PIAB have released that the average time for them to assess a personal injury case takes around 7 months. However, PIAB advised that it can take up to 9-10 months to assess a case and it is largely dependent on a case by case basis. However, this does not take in account any early settlements between a client’s solicitor and the insurance company of the Respondent which could occur in as little as 2-3 months from taking a personal injury claim.
The breakdown of the awards to claimants in 2016 were made up of 74% road traffic accidents, workplace accidents equalling 9% and public liability accidents accounting for 17% of the total awards issued by PIAB. The reason for the significant numbers of road traffic claims were due to the fact that most workplace and public liability accidents are settled outside of the PIAB process or go straight to Court. The average PIAB award in 2016 amounted to €24,305. However, at Rogers Solicitors, we find that the majority of assessments from PIAB could be increased and for this reason, we would reject a high quantity of assessments in order to secure the highest possible amount of compensation possible for our clients.

For information on making a personal injury claim* please review our Personal Injury Solicitors page.