The Minister for Health has revealed that the cost of medical negligence claims to the State has increased by more than 650% in just over a decade.
The State Claims Agency settled medical negligence claims for €81 million in 2010, Stephen Donnelly reported to the Health Committee.
The minister warned that if nothing is done, the bill, which reached €530 million this year, will continue to rise.
“There is a real and growing problem in terms of the scale of medical negligence claims”, Mr. Donnelly said, and urged that urgent action be taken.
He suggested that the implementation of a no-fault compensation scheme might be advantageous.
Mr Donnelly was before the Health Committee to ask for approval for a supplementary budget for his department of almost €1.4bn.
Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan expressed concern “at the size of the supplementary estimate at this late stage”.
The minister explained that this was necessary due to a larger-than-expected Covid-19 Omicron wave and actions taken by the government after the 2022 Budget had been approved.
The national wage agreement and the €189 million recognition payment for frontline workers were among the additional measures that totaled €643 million.
The minister said the outstanding payments will be made before Christmas to “as many as possible” of the 66,000 people who are still waiting for it.
Committee members expressed anger at having received a briefing document only an hour before today’s session began.
There was considerable confusion regarding who had called the meeting. Mr. Donnelly claimed that his staff had spent the entire weekend putting the document together despite only having been invited to appear before the committee last Thursday.