The legal firm operated by solicitor Cian O'Carroll - who represented the late Vicky Phelan in her landmark CervicalCheck case - received legal costs of €17.47million from medical negligence cases taken against the State over the past two years.
New figures provided by Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill reveal Mr O'Carroll's firm, based in Cashel, Co. Tipperary, received the highest amount among plaintiff firms in medical negligence cases against the State in 2023 and 2024.
The figures provided to Social Democrats TD Aidan Farrelly in a written Dáil reply show that Mr O'Carroll's firm received €9.09million in legal costs last year concerning 33 cases, and €8.38million in 2023 in relation to 22 cases.
The top ten best-paid plaintiff firms shared €36.18million in legal costs last year, with Augustus Cullen Law Solicitors getting €6.02million and Michael Boylan Solicitors receiving €5.22million.
Cantillons Solicitors received €4.65million in legal costs, Callan Tansey Solicitors got €4.38million and Damien Tansey Solicitors received €2.53million.
Last year, plaintiff legal firms in medical negligence cases received €70.5million - up 11.5% on the €63.22million total in 2023.
Mr O'Carroll told the Irish Daily Mail on Tuesday: 'Our firm continues to specialise almost exclusively in cases of very serious harm or catastrophic injuries arising from medical negligence and we have a team of 22 people, including eight solicitors.'
He said the number of cases taken by the firm 'is not particularly large and this is a reflection of the complexity of the cases themselves, typically arising from either fatal cancer misdiagnosis or birth-related brain injuries to babies that, as you can imagine, result in lifelong care needs'.
He continued: 'All such legal costs include not only our fees, but the fees of the team of brilliant barristers... Costs include all of the expert reports required to investigate and prove these cases, both in terms of who is at fault for the injury, but also very detailed opinions on what those injuries mean for our client in terms of lifelong care, accommodation, loss of earnings, assistive technologies and the like.
'Many of these cases will have 15 or even 20 experts involved due to the complex nature of the harm caused by the State's negligence.' He said the 'overall trend in legal costs on a case-by-case assessment is actually downward over the last decade' and that this is largely due to the 'excellent work' of the National Treas- ury Management Agency's legal costs unit in 'protecting the State's interests'. He added: 'What has been growing is the value of special damages for these victims of the most serious cases and this is mostly because the cost of medical care and treatment continues to rise. It is this inflation that has led to the significant increase in the costs.'
On CervicalCheck cases, Mr O'Carroll said: 'We do have several cases still ongoing but mostly these are new cases arising from ongoing serious errors within CervicalCheck. It is shocking to say but three of our clients have now died and eight have been seriously harmed by negligence arising in the screening service since the Scally reforms that we were told would "fix" the gross negligence within Cervical-Check.' The total paid out by the State Claims Agency (SCA) in medical negligence damages in 2024 was €210.46million, compared to €275.9million in 2023.
Legal firms representing the SCA in medical negligence cases last year received a total pf €32.45million, with Comyn Kelleher Tobin getting the top amount at €5.02million.
