What the Act Did: From PIAB to the Injuries Resolution Board

The Personal Injuries Resolution Board Act 2022 is the most substantial reform of Ireland's pre-litigation claims system since that body was created in 2003. It rewired the statutory gateway through which almost every personal injury claim in Ireland must pass before court proceedings can issue. Rather than replacing the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, the 2022 Act works by amending it: renaming the Board, inserting an entirely new mediation chapter, tightening what a valid application must contain, allowing the Board to hold on to complex claims for longer, and sharpening the costs consequences of walking away from an assessment.

In outline, the Act does six things. It:

• renames PIAB as the Personal Injuries Resolution Board, operating publicly as the Injuries Resolution Board;
• creates a free, voluntary mediation route alongside assessment (Chapter 1A);
• brings claims that are wholly psychological within the Board's scope;
• lets the Board retain a claim for up to two further years while a long-term prognosis settles (section 49A);
• gives a respondent-accepted assessment the force of a tender offer against a claimant who sues and fails to beat it (section 51A);
• tightens applications, requiring the claimant's signature, PPS number and a treating doctor's medical report, and adds an anti-fraud offence.

Each change is explained in detail below, alongside the commencement date that switched it on.

Section 2 effects the rename. From the appointed day, the Personal Injuries Assessment Board became, in English, the Personal Injuries Resolution Board (sometimes abbreviated PIRB) and, in Irish, An Bord um Réiteach Díobhálacha Pearsanta, with every reference to the old name in legislation, proceedings, or documents to be read as a reference to the new one. That day arrived on 14 December 2023, and the body now presents itself publicly as the Injuries Resolution Board. The word swapped in the title, "Resolution" for "Assessment", is the whole reform in miniature: the Board is no longer confined to putting a figure on a claim where liability is conceded, because it can now help the parties resolve the claim by agreement.

The Act did not appear in a vacuum. It delivers a principal action of the Government's Action Plan for Insurance Reform, launched in December 2020 with 66 actions aimed at reducing the cost of claims. The empirical case was set out in the Central Bank's National Claims Information Database reporting: litigated personal injury claims resolve, on average, more than two years slower than claims settled through the Board, and for claims under €100,000 in the first half of 2022 the average legal costs of a litigated settlement were reported at around €17,813 against roughly €1,156 through the Board, despite broadly similar award levels. The Oireachtas passed the Bill (Bill 78 of 2022) in under five months, and the President signed it on 13 December 2022.

The New Mediation Function: Chapter 1A

Section 9 inserts a new Chapter 1A, sections 18A to 18F, into the 2003 Act: the Board's first statutory mediation function. The long title puts the purpose plainly: the Act exists, among other things, "to provide that the Board may make provision for a mediation process in respect of relevant claims". The inserted definition is worth reading in full, because it fixes the character of the whole scheme:

"mediation" means "a confidential, facilitative, and voluntary process in which parties … attempt to reach a mutually acceptable agreement to resolve the relevant claim"

Section 18A of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, as inserted by section 9 of the Personal Injuries Resolution Board Act 2022 (consolidated text, Law Reform Commission)

How the statutory mediation process works

Mediation at the Board is opt-in on both sides. A claimant can indicate consent on the application itself, the respondent must also agree, and either party may withdraw consent before the process concludes. Where both consent, the claim goes to a mediator before, or instead of, the familiar assessment track. The scheme is modelled on the principles of the Mediation Act 2017 but stands apart from it: Board mediation is free of charge, happens before any authorisation or proceedings, and in practice is usually conducted by telephone in separate calls, so the parties never need to face each other. Because the mediator's remit is agreement rather than assessment, the process can take in matters the assessment track could not reach, including disputes about liability and contributory negligence as well as the value of the claim. The Board appoints the mediators, who may be members of its own staff or external appointees, and it holds a statutory power to make procedural rules for the process. A mediator who has conducted a mediation cannot then act as an assessor on the same claim if it reverts to assessment. Throughout, the standard nine-month statutory assessment window continues to apply, so mediation is designed to sit inside the existing timetable rather than lengthen it.

Confidentiality and the mediator

Confidentiality is the load-bearing wall of Chapter 1A. Communications, documents, and the mediator's report are protected: they cannot be deployed in a later Board assessment or in court proceedings. The protection runs one way only, though. Evidence that already existed and would be admissible or discoverable in proceedings does not acquire privilege merely because someone mentioned it in mediation. After the process concludes, the mediator reports to the Board, and the report shares the same confidential status.

The ten-day cooling-off period and the order to pay

Where the parties reach agreement, the mediator records it in writing and both sides sign. A ten-day cooling-off period then runs, during which either party may withdraw from the agreement by notifying the mediator and the Board. If neither withdraws, the agreement stands, and the Board issues an order directing payment of the agreed sum, giving the settlement binding, enforceable effect. If mediation fails, or consent is withdrawn, the claim moves back into the assessment track in the ordinary way, provided the respondent still consents to assessment.

The rollout was deliberately staged by claim category. Mediation went live for employer liability claims on 14 December 2023, was extended to public liability claims on 8 May 2024, and reached motor liability claims on 12 December 2024, completing coverage of the three categories that make up the Board's caseload. Motor claims, the largest share of that caseload, were therefore the last to gain access.

Key Provisions Beyond Mediation: Section by Section

The rest of the 2022 Act turns on a small number of operative sections, each amending the 2003 Act. The provisions below are the ones with day-to-day consequences for anyone bringing or defending a claim. Section references are to the 2022 Act unless stated otherwise, and every entry links back to the consolidated 2003 Act, which is where the amended law actually lives. Beyond the provisions below, the Act also broadened the Board's statutory functions, adding data analysis, research publication, and public-information roles that have already produced a series of claims-data reports, and it adjusted the Board's fee-charging powers, the machinery behind the 2025 fees regulations noted in the quick reference above.

• Section 3: mandatory application requirements
• Section 7: psychological injuries within scope
• Sections 14 and 15: long-term prognosis retention (s.49A)
• Section 16: costs and the deemed offer of tender (s.51A)
• Sections 20 and 22: Garda disclosure and the false information offence

Section 3: Mandatory application requirements

Since 4 September 2023, an application to the Board must carry the claimant's own signature, even where a solicitor acts, together with the claimant's PPS number (or alternative identity documentation where none exists) and a medical report from a treating practitioner describing the injuries. Section 3 writes these requirements into section 11 of the 2003 Act. The consequence of falling short is severe and easy to miss: an application that is not complete does not engage the limitation protection in section 50 of the 2003 Act, so the two-year clock on the claim keeps running. An application filed close to the limitation deadline with a missing signature or without a compliant medical report gives no shelter at all. This is now one of the sharpest procedural risks in Irish personal injury practice.

Section 7: Psychological injuries within scope

Before the 2022 Act, a claim consisting wholly of psychological injury was routinely released by the Board through an authorisation, sending the claimant straight to court. Section 7 changes the Board's discretion so that claims consisting wholly or partly of psychological damage can now be retained and assessed, provided the injury is capable of assessment on the medical evidence. The change took effect under the phased commencement orders beginning in February 2023. It matters most for an injured person whose claim arises from workplace trauma, a road collision without physical injury, or a similar situation that previously bypassed the Board entirely.

Sections 14 and 15: Retention where a long-term prognosis is awaited (section 49A)

Serious injuries often refuse to stabilise inside the Board's nine-month assessment window. The old answer was release into litigation before anyone knew the long-term picture. Section 14 inserts a new section 49A into the 2003 Act allowing the Board, on written notice to the parties, to retain a claim for up to two further years where a long-term prognosis is unlikely to be available in the normal period, and to continue beyond that with the consent of all parties. Section 15 addresses the question every solicitor asks next: the limitation pause under section 50 continues to apply during the retention period, so the claimant's position is protected while the medical picture matures. Both provisions commenced on 13 February 2023, and the Department has credited them with letting the Board keep cases that would previously have been forced into costly litigation.

Section 16: Costs and the deemed offer of tender (section 51A)

Section 16 rewrites section 51A of the 2003 Act, and it is the provision with the most bite in litigation strategy. Where a claimant rejects an assessment that the respondent has accepted, and then sues, the accepted assessment is treated as an offer of tender payment made on the date the respondent accepted it. A claimant who fails to beat the assessment in court faces the classic tender consequences: no order for their own costs, and exposure to the respondent's costs from the date of the deemed tender. Section 16(2) contains a transitional carve-out for claims where the assessment had already been refused before commencement. The practical effect, in force since 13 February 2023, is that rejecting a respondent-accepted assessment is now a priced decision, and the price is set by statute rather than judicial discretion alone. Any advice on acceptance or rejection has to weigh that exposure against the realistic range of a court award under the Personal Injuries Guidelines.

Sections 20 and 22: Disclosure to Gardaí and the false information offence

Two provisions form the Act's anti-fraud spine. Section 20 lifts the general confidentiality prohibition far enough to let the Board pass information to An Garda Síochána where it suspects the information relates to an offence, a gateway aimed at staged accidents and exaggerated claims. Section 22 creates the offence itself, now standing as section 80A of the 2003 Act: knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information in a material particular in connection with an application, prosecutable on summary conviction. The recklessness limb deserves attention, because it reaches assertions made without checking, not only deliberate lies. Together with the identity requirements in section 3, these provisions raise the standard of care for everyone who prepares or signs Board paperwork.

The Act in Practice: How a Claim Moves Through the Injuries Resolution Board Now

In practice, the reformed Board now offers two resolution routes inside one statutory process. A claim still begins with a complete application under section 11, and the respondent still has 90 days to consent to the Board dealing with it. What has changed is what "dealing with it" can mean: assessment against the Personal Injuries Guidelines as before, mediation where both parties opt in, or mediation followed by assessment if no agreement is reached. Rejection of an assessment still produces an authorisation to litigate, but section 16 has changed the economics of using it. Commentary across the insurance and legal sectors has framed mediation as the Board's answer to attritional claims: the high-volume, lower-value disputes over liability or contributory negligence that previously had to be released into a crowded court list because assessment could not decide a contested question of fault. Chapter 1A keeps that traffic inside the statutory process. The early numbers suggest the reform is bedding in: the Department reported a 71 per cent consent rate to the Board's process in the third quarter of 2024 — a third consecutive year at or above 70 per cent — with assessment acceptance rates rising from 36 per cent in mid-2021 to around 50 per cent, and the Board recorded 20,837 new applications in 2024, with an estimated €76 million saved that year in avoided litigation costs. Across its first twenty years, the Board reports receiving around 500,000 claims and delivering over 180,000 awards worth approximately €2.2 billion. Step-by-step guidance on applying, responding to a section 8 notice, and deciding on an assessment sits in our claim guides, starting with the Injuries Resolution Board hub; this page stays with the statute itself.

What Questions Does the 2022 Act Leave Unresolved?

The Act settled the architecture, but three questions remain open in mid-2026. First, its own report card. Section 23 obliges the Minister to review the operation of the amendments within 18 months of that section's commencement and to report within a further 12 months; with section 23 in force since 14 December 2023, the reporting window runs to mid-2026, and no published review had appeared at the time of writing (July 2026). Second, mediation's trajectory: uptake indicators are encouraging, with the Department citing roughly 40 per cent of workplace-accident claimants expressing willingness to mediate in the first months, but the service only reached full coverage in December 2024, so its effect on settlement patterns is still being measured through the Board's annual reporting. Third, the edges the Act did not touch: the medical negligence exclusion is untouched, the nine-month assessment spine is unchanged, and quantum remains governed by the Personal Injuries Guidelines rather than anything in this Act. That boundary stayed live through 2025: draft revised Guidelines submitted to the Minister in February 2025 were held back from the Oireachtas that July for further review, and the successor Action Plan for Insurance Reform published on 24 July 2025 made the Guidelines update process a priority action, all of it outside this Act's four corners. For anyone weighing what the 2022 reforms mean for compensation for injury in Ireland, the honest answer is that the Act changed how claims resolve, not how much they are worth, and the sections that follow trace where its provisions came from and how they connect to the rest of the statute book.

When Did the Personal Injuries Resolution Board Act 2022 Come Into Force?

The Act was signed in December 2022 but commenced in stages over two years, and the staging determines which rules applied on any given date. No single official page assembles the full sequence; the table below consolidates it from the commencement orders and departmental announcements.

A departmental Post-Enactment Report on the Act's first twelve months was published in December 2023, separate from the section 23 statutory review described above.

Which rules apply to an existing claim?

Because commencement was staged, the applicable rules turn on dates rather than on when a claim was first notified. The section 51A tender consequence attaches only where the assessment had not already been refused before 13 February 2023, per the transitional rule in section 16(2). The signature, identity, and medical-report requirements bind applications made on or after 4 September 2023; earlier applications were judged against the old form. And mediation is available by claim category from the dates in the table above, so a motor claim could not be mediated before 12 December 2024, however early it was lodged.

Check which rules applied on a date

Relationship to the PIAB Act 2003 and Other Legislation

The 2022 Act has almost no free-standing life: nearly every operative provision amends or inserts text into the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003. That architecture has a practical consequence for anyone researching the law. Reading the 2022 Act in isolation shows you the changes; reading the Revised 2003 Act maintained by the Law Reform Commission shows you the law as it now stands, with every insertion in place and every amendment annotated. The 2022 Act is the second substantial amendment of the framework, following the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (Amendment) Act 2019, which tightened the Board's procedural powers; the collective citation is now the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Acts 2003 to 2022, and our page on the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003 covers the original scheme that both build on.

Interaction with the Mediation Act 2017: Chapter 1A borrows the 2017 Act's core commitments, voluntariness, confidentiality, and mediator-assisted agreement, but creates a separate statutory scheme. Board mediation is free, pre-litigation, and administered by the Board under its own rules, whereas mediation under the 2017 Act typically arises once proceedings are in contemplation or issued and carries its own costs. The 2017 framework also supplies the professional context: solicitors already carry duties to advise clients about mediation, and the Board's service gives that advice a concrete, no-cost destination much earlier in the life of a claim. Professional commentary through 2026 has pressed the other side of that duty: not every dispute suits mediation, and the advice has to weigh a faster consensual settlement against proceeding without the discovery powers a court provides.

Interaction with the Statute of Limitations and section 50: Section 50 of the 2003 Act pauses the limitation clock while a claim is properly before the Board. The 2022 Act tightened the gate into that protection (a complete application is now the price of entry, per section 3) and lengthened the protection's reach (retention under section 49A keeps the pause running, per section 15). The two changes point in opposite directions for claimants: more protection once you are validly inside the process, less forgiveness for a defective application at the door.

Two neighbouring 2022 statutes worth distinguishing: the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Act 2022 (No. 33 of 2022) is a different Act that, from 10 April 2023, routes Garda malicious-injury compensation claims through the Board with modifications, and it is easily confused with this one in search results. Separately, section 24 of the Personal Injuries Resolution Board Act amends the Freedom of Information Act 2014 in consequence of the Board's new functions. On quantum, nothing in the 2022 Act touches award levels: assessments and mediated settlements alike sit against the Personal Injuries Guidelines made under the Judicial Council Act 2019.

Leading Cases and the Guidelines Context

The 2022 amendments are young, and no substantial body of reported authority interpreting them has yet accumulated. The case that defines the Board's current operating environment concerns the Guidelines it must apply rather than the 2022 Act itself.

Frequently Asked Questions