Personal Injury Claims
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-17
============================================================

Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal

I thank Deputy Sherlock very much for raising this very important issue. PPOs, as the Deputy set out very clearly, are an alternative to lump sum awards as a method of paying compensation to catastrophically injured people.
Instead of receiving compensation in one tranche, as the Deputy laid out, a payment is made annually on an agreed date. The annual payment amount is calculated to meet the cost of permanent and long-term care and treatment. An indexation rate is applied to the annual payment amount to ensure the amount keeps pace with inflation.
Part 3 of the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2023 contains amendments to the Civil Liability Act 1961, which provide that indexation of periodic payment orders will no longer be fixed solely on the consumer price index. Instead, the indexation rate for periodic payment orders will be set by regulations made by the Minister for justice with the consent of the Minister for Finance.
The amendments arise from a High Court decision on the existing indexation rate, which found that it was not an appropriate index for use with periodic payment orders, PPOs. The amendments proposed will allow greater flexibility in the setting of the indexation rate and set out the general rule that a periodic payment order will be adjusted on an annual basis by reference to an index specified under the section.
In 2024, the then Minister for justice published two reports relating to compensation payments in personal injury cases. A working group on the indexation rate for periodic payment orders was established to advise on an appropriate index following a High Court determination that the index used in primary legislation was unworkable. Its report recommended that the PPO indexation rate should be based on a combination of the harmonised index of consumer prices and the annual rate of change in nominal hourly health earnings. The amount of a yearly periodic payment payable should be based on a periodic payment order indexation rate comprising 80% of average annual rate of change in nominal hourly health earnings added to 20% of the harmonised index of consumer prices. Where a court makes a lump sum award in a personal injury case, it uses the discount rate to determine the size of the award necessary to compensate a person for future losses. The rate reflects what an award recipient would likely receive in return if the award amount were invested.
Separately, an independent expert working group was set up to advise on an appropriate discount rate for use in catastrophic injury cases. Its report recommended that the discount rate should remain unchanged from the rate set by the High Court in 2014 and subsequently confirmed by the Court of Appeal and plaintiffs in catastrophic injury cases should continue to be considered as having a risk-averse profile. It also recommended that an expert group should meet at a maximum of every three years to reassess the discount rate and that a trigger mechanism should be introduced to enable a review of the discount rate if there is a marked change in economic circumstances or if the rate is successfully challenged in court.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-17