Criminal injuries compensation in Ireland: the key facts

Sixteen rules govern almost every application. They are gathered here so you can check your own position in one place before reading further. Each is stated as it stood in Ireland immediately before the Scheme was amended on 27 July 2026, and each carries the source it came from.

The Scheme was amended and published on 27 July 2026 following the Court of Justice ruling of 2 October 2025 and the Government decision of 14 April 2026. The rows on pain and suffering and on the absence of a maximum are the ones the amendment changes ¹.

Quick answers

The State pays criminal injuries compensation in Ireland, not the offender. Four questions below cover the Scheme: what it is, who can apply, what it pays, and how long you have.

Three more cover process: how to apply, who decides, and how the Scheme differs from suing someone. Each answer runs to a line.

Which situation are you in?

Five situations account for most people who reach this page. Find yours below, then follow the link that goes deeper.

What separates these situations is not how badly you were hurt. It is when the injury happened, whether anyone else is legally responsible for it, and whether the person injured survived. Those three facts decide which route is open to you.

What is the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme?

The Scheme is a State-funded compensation route, not a court case. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme has operated in Ireland since 1974. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (CICT) runs it.

The two names are not interchangeable. The Scheme is the set of rules that says what can be paid. The Tribunal is the body that applies those rules.

Understanding how to pursue compensation for injury in Ireland starts with knowing which route applies to you. After a violent crime, the State scheme is often the only route that leads anywhere.

So who actually pays, and on what basis? Payments come from public funds on an ex gratia basis. Ex gratia means government created the Scheme by decision rather than through an Act of the Oireachtas. An award therefore is not a legal entitlement in the way a court judgment is.

Unlike England and Wales, Ireland's Scheme stays administrative and ex gratia. There the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority runs a statutory scheme.

An application to the Tribunal isn't a case against the person who hurt you. The Tribunal decides what the State will pay. It can't punish anyone or order the offender to do anything.

Ireland has used this administrative tribunal model before, including for the Hepatitis C tribunal, which began on an administrative basis in 1995 and was later placed on a statutory footing by the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal Act 1997. The Scheme was amended and published on 27 July 2026, replacing the text effective 31 January 2025, and gov.ie [1] publishes it in full.

In practice the ex gratia label matters most when the Tribunal refuses an application. The Tribunal operates under the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration. Who decides, and what you can do about a refusal, comes further down this page.

Who can apply to the Scheme?

Four groups can apply, and one of them surprises people. Victims of a crime of violence in Ireland form the largest group. Dependants can apply where the victim died, and so can the person who maintained the victim.

Which group do most people overlook? The fourth group is the one people miss. It covers a person injured while, in the words of gov.ie (Updated 2026) [10], “assisting or attempting to assist the prevention of a reported crime or the saving of human life”.

Two details in that wording matter. The crime must have been reported, and saving a life counts on its own, whether or not a crime was in progress.

Someone who steps in to stop an assault can apply in their own right, where they take an injury doing so. You don't have to be the original target of the violence. Nor does the offender need to face a charge or a conviction. The Scheme does require a prompt report to An Garda Síochána, and it requires you to keep helping with the Garda investigation.

Reports can also go to Fiosrú, the Office of the Police Ombudsman. That route covers a complaint about a member of An Garda Síochána. One bar fell away on 20 April 2021.

The Scheme no longer shuts out injuries from someone in the same household. It's open to Irish residents and to visitors hurt in Ireland alike.

Eligibility is not automatic even inside those four groups. The Tribunal can reduce or refuse an award on grounds connected to conduct, character or delay. Those grounds sit in full on who can claim criminal injuries compensation. That page also shows how the Tribunal has applied them.

Compensation for victims of crime in Ireland turns on those details more often than on the headline categories.

The Scheme asks what the injury cost you, not who was to blame. That single difference explains most of what follows.

Where does your situation fit? A quick self-check

What does the Scheme pay for, and what is changing?

The Scheme pays proven financial loss, and that has changed. So what can you actually be paid for? Pain and suffering was excluded from 1986 until the amended Scheme published on 27 July 2026 removed the exclusion, following the Court of Justice ruling of 2 October 2025.

What the Scheme covers today

The Scheme pays vouched loss, not damages for suffering. Vouched loss means financial loss you can prove with receipts, records or payslips. Loss you simply assert is different.

The Irish Scheme text effective 31 January 2025, which the amendment of 27 July 2026 replaces, set what counts. That covers medical expenses, travel, prescriptions, expert report costs and loss of earnings. You can also recover future loss of earnings where the injury has lasting effects.

The distinction between general and special damages therefore decides most of what an application is worth. A minimum award threshold of €500 also applies, so the smallest claims fall away.

Head by head evidencing sits on what criminal injuries compensation covers. That page sets out what the Tribunal takes as proof of each.

What that looks like in a decided case is on the record. In decision 54685 [11] the Tribunal allowed €1,600 for psychological therapy, €1,493.01 for medical attendance and €277.75 for prescriptions. It then deducted €200 the applicant had already received from the offender, leaving an award of €3,170.76.

Why did the Scheme pay nothing for pain and suffering?

General damages for pain and suffering sat outside the Scheme from 1986 until 27 July 2026. Ireland differed from England and Wales, where the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012 has long paid fixed tariff awards for defined physical and mental injuries, and paid only financial loss.

The exclusion had a location in the Scheme. It was paragraph 6(e) of the text in force before 27 July 2026, and the Tribunal named it in decision 51988 [24]. The Scheme, the Tribunal said, “does not permit the Tribunal to make any award for general pain and suffering caused by the injury”.

The cut-off was written into the Scheme by date. The Tribunal quoted the wording in decision 53871 [23]. Compensation is not payable “in so far as injuries sustained on or after 1st April, 1986 are concerned in respect of pain and suffering”.

Two sources outside gov.ie say the same thing. Citizens Information states that the Scheme “does not compensate you for general damages, such as pain and suffering” ⁷. The Law Reform Commission dates the exclusion to 1 April 1986, in Consultation Paper 67 (2022) [26] at paragraphs 1.20 and 1.32. Both sources predate the 27 July 2026 amendment; Citizens Information had not been updated to reflect it when this page was checked.

What gets deducted from an award

The Scheme pays the shortfall, not the headline loss. Amounts already met from another source come off before the Tribunal calculates an award ¹.

Sick pay from an employer counts. So does a payment under an income protection or health insurance policy, and so does a social welfare payment covering the same period. The Scheme exists to meet loss that nobody else has met.

Treatment the State already paid for is the deduction applicants least expect. Where the State has funded medical treatment or prescription costs, those costs cannot be recovered again ¹⁰. A medical card holder who paid nothing out of pocket has no medical expense to claim, however extensive the treatment was.

Deductions matter more than most applicants expect, because they can take an application below the €500 minimum award threshold. An applicant whose employer paid full sick pay may have no earnings loss left to claim. Medical expenses paid personally usually survive, because no other source met them.

The change that has not yet taken effect

The Court of Justice has ruled against the exclusion. On 2 October 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union gave judgment in Case C-284/24 (EUR-Lex) [3]. Article 12(2) of Directive 2004/80/EC (EUR-Lex) [4] sets the standard the Court applied.

A national scheme cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude all compensation for pain and suffering. The Court was careful about what that does not mean. Member States are “not necessarily obliged to provide complete reparation”, and the financial viability of national compensation schemes may be taken into account; compensation must nonetheless take account of the seriousness of the consequences for the victim, and may not be purely symbolic or manifestly insufficient. The applicant's award under the Irish Scheme had been €645.62, a figure the Court recorded at paragraph 13.

The State later settled that applicant’s case for a reported figure of around €60,000, as reported by The Irish Times [27], a figure that paper reports as an estimate rather than a confirmed sum. Government approved an amendment to the Scheme on 14 April 2026 to provide for pain and suffering. The amended Scheme was published on gov.ie on 27 July 2026 ¹.

As at 27 July 2026 the exclusion has been removed. Anyone applying now should read the amended Scheme text first, because the amount of any award is to be within guidance issued by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, and that guidance has not been examined for this page.

Two dates matter for anyone reading this in 2026. The first is the date of your injury, which fixes the version of the Scheme in force. The second is 27 July 2026, the date the amended Scheme was published.

Both dates sit against the Scheme deadline, and this leads to the question of timing.

A ruling from Luxembourg does not rewrite an Irish scheme by itself. The text has to be amended, and until it is, the old rule is the rule.

How long do you have to apply?

Three months is the rule, and it starts at the incident. Applications should reach the Tribunal within three months of the event that caused the injury.

The Tribunal can accept a later application where the circumstances justify the delay. A child's three months runs from their eighteenth birthday instead.

How late is too late? An outer boundary sits behind that discretion. The Scheme text in force before 27 July 2026 also set an outer limit. It barred any application where the event took place more than two years before the date of application.

Two sources outside gov.ie set out the same window. Citizens Information gives three months, with a two-year maximum in exceptional circumstances ⁷. The Law Reform Commission records the same ceiling ²⁶.

Late is therefore survivable up to a point, and past that point it isn't. No one should read the discretion as a reason to wait.

One published decision sits outside that boundary. The Tribunal accepted an application made many years late, and it called that step exceptional treatment rather than an ordinary extension ¹⁸. The number of years is redacted in the published decision. The historic abuse question further down sets out what carried it.

What do published decisions show about late applications?

Published Tribunal decisions (gov.ie) [2] show one excuse that doesn't work. The Tribunal has rejected not knowing the Scheme existed as a reason for applying late. It has refused applicants on time grounds who genuinely didn't know they could apply. Unlike England and Wales, Ireland sets a different application window and a different test for extending it.

Two published decisions show where the line falls. In decision 53823 [12] the Tribunal extended time because the applicant had “demonstrated serious psychological sequalae resulting in obvious impairment”. That impairment had impeded a timely application, and the Tribunal went on to award €73,671.

In decision 52951 [13] a late applicant who then did not answer the Tribunal’s requests for information received nothing. The reason for a delay has to be evidenced rather than asserted.

Extension grounds and the transitional window sit on time limits for criminal injuries compensation. That page also sets Scheme timing beside the civil limitation periods. The three routes section further down puts that beside the time limit for a civil claim.

How to apply, in outline

Applying moves through four states, not four forms. We call this the Four-State Application Protocol: reported, evidenced, submitted and decided.

Each state in the Four-State Application Protocol has one job, and skipping any of them is what causes most delays. Nothing can start until the first state is complete.

1. Reported. You tell An Garda Síochána what happened, without delay. The Scheme treats a prompt report as a condition, not a formality.
2. Evidenced. You gather what proves your loss: medical records, receipts, payslips and the Garda reference number.
3. Submitted. You send the completed application form to the Tribunal, inside the time limit that applies to you.
4. Decided. You answer the Tribunal's queries, and it decides on the papers or after a hearing.

What do you need ready, and how long does it take?

Four documents carry most of the weight. The Garda reference number links your application to the investigation. Medical records establish that the injury happened, what treatment it required and what it left behind. Payslips prove what the injury cost you in earnings.

Paperwork failures are the most avoidable reason applications stall. People throw receipts away, so they can't vouch out-of-pocket costs at all. They claim earnings as a round figure instead of proving them from payslips. Nobody answers the Tribunal's letters, and the file sits unmoved.

Applicants reasonably want to know how long the process takes. Nobody publishes a standard timescale. The honest answer depends on your evidence and on whether the Tribunal holds a hearing.

What you control is the second state. An application that arrives fully evidenced gives the Tribunal less to come back to you about.

Citizens Information (Updated April 2025) [7] also summarises the procedural background. That page last changed on 11 April 2025, so check anything time-sensitive against gov.ie ¹.

What actually holds an application up? The next step is to gather the medical records and receipts before the form goes in, running the Four-State Application Protocol in order.

The Scheme doesn't pay the legal costs of making an application. Form field instruction and evidence templates sit on how to apply for criminal injuries compensation. That page also covers what to do at each stage of Tribunal correspondence.

Who decides, and what happens if you disagree?

Who decides depends on how much is at stake. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal in Ireland decides applications at three levels. The value of the award fixes the level.

At first instance, a duly authorised officer of the Tribunal may decide a claim where the amount involved does not exceed €3,000 ¹⁰. Above that, the application goes to the Tribunal itself. A single member decides where the amount sought is below €75,000, and three members decide where it is above €75,000.

In practice that first tier is largely theoretical. The Law Reform Commission recorded in 2022 that no duly authorised officers of the Tribunal were then in post ²⁶.

Timing is the part nobody warns applicants about. The Tribunal points to three causes of delay: an unfinished Garda investigation, live court proceedings, and unsettled medical assessments ¹⁰. It says cases can take several years to reach it.

How do you appeal a Tribunal decision?

What happens if the decision goes against you? An appeal goes to a fresh panel of three members, which hears the case afresh. The Tribunal holds hearings in private, and it can hold them remotely. In 2024 the Tribunal held 84 appeal hearings, and over 90 per cent of them ran remotely.

The Tribunal also publishes its decisions, redacted to remove personal data ¹⁰. That is why the decisions cited on this page carry blanked-out names and dates.

The courts have set limits on how the Tribunal may operate. In Bowes v The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal; Brophy v The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal [2022] IEHC 703, Holland J held on 20 December 2022 that applying the two-year backstop introduced in 2021 retrospectively, without transitional provision, breached the EU law principle of effectiveness. The judgment expressly accepts that short time limits are permissible in principle. The ruling matters for a wider reason. It treats Scheme procedure as answerable to EU law, not only to the Scheme's own terms.

Disagreeing with a decision is not the same as being stuck with it. An appeal is the route inside the Scheme, and judicial review is the route outside it. Nobody publishes how quickly the Tribunal pays an award after a decision, so this page gives no figure.

Can the Tribunal pay anything before it decides?

It can, and paragraph 8 of the Scheme is what allows it. The Tribunal quoted that paragraph in decision 54644 [20], where it set out the power in the Scheme’s own words.

Compensation will be by way of a lump sum payment, rather than a periodical pension, but it will be open to the Tribunal to make an interim award and to postpone making a final award in a case in which a final medical assessment of the injury is delayed

The Tribunal paid €30,000 as an interim award in that case. In decision 23970 [21] it directed an interim award of €100,000 held in trust for the applicant. Both sums came off the final figure.

An interim award isn't automatic, and it isn't a part payment on request. It answers a specific problem, which is a medical picture that hasn't settled yet. Where the injury is still changing, the Tribunal can pay something now and decide the rest later.

If a family member died as a result of a crime

Families can apply where the victim died. The Scheme provides for dependants, and for the person who paid the funeral costs.

A family can claim loss the victim suffered before death, together with the dependency it has lost. Funeral and burial expenses count too.

Does the Scheme recognise grief at all? It does, through a payment for the mental distress of dependants. Civil law calls that payment solatium. The Tribunal awards it under section 49 of the Civil Liability Act 1961, rather than under a rule of its own ¹⁰.

The ceiling is €35,000 shared among the dependants. It sits in section 49(1)(b) of the Civil Liability Act 1961 (Revised Acts) [19], substituted by statutory instrument with effect from 11 January 2014.

One cap, then, and not two. A civil fatal claim and a Scheme application draw on the same statutory figure, which is why the same €35,000 turns up in both places.

Who counts as a dependant sits on criminal injuries compensation in fatal cases. That page also covers how the Tribunal divides the cap among family members. Where someone other than the offender was legally responsible for the death, fatal injury claims may run alongside a Scheme application.

Nothing about this process is quick, and nothing about it sets out to comfort anyone. The Scheme deals in money. It can only measure what money can measure. Gathering the records a family needs is easier close to the event than months later.

Three routes to compensation after a violent crime in Ireland

Three routes exist, and they aren't alternatives to each other. The three routes means the three separate ways money can reach a victim of violent crime in Ireland.

The routes are the Scheme, a civil claim, and a compensation order from a criminal court. You can be eligible for more than one, and what one route pays can cut what another pays.

The civil claim route

A civil claim targets whoever was legally responsible. You can sue a person for assaulting you in Ireland, but that person is often not the one worth suing.

Most claims start with the Injuries Resolution Board (IRB). It carried the name Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) until 2023. The Personal Injuries Guidelines (2021) govern how damages are assessed, and they replaced the Book of Quantum. Unlike the Scheme, personal injury claims in Ireland can compensate pain and suffering as well as financial loss.

Two things separate the routes more than anything else. A civil claim needs legal fault proved on the balance of probabilities, and the Scheme does not. A civil claim also carries a costs risk, because a claim that fails can leave you paying the other side. The Scheme carries no equivalent exposure, and a civil action has its own two-year limitation period running separately from the Scheme deadline.

Compensation orders from a criminal court

A compensation order needs a conviction and an offender with means. A criminal court can order a convicted offender to pay compensation under section 6 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 (Irish Statute Book) [5]. Both conditions have to hold, so many victims never see an order at all.

An order is made in the criminal proceedings, so it costs the victim nothing to seek. The court sets the amount by reference to what the offender can realistically pay, which is why orders are often far below the loss.

Enforcement is the weak point. An order that the offender ignores leaves the victim pursuing the money, and an offender serving a sentence rarely has earnings to pursue.

In most cases the practical value of an order is whatever arrives, not whatever was ordered.

The Tribunal then deducts whatever you actually receive under one from a Scheme award. You cannot recover the same loss twice across the three routes.

Choosing between the three routes

The real question is who has insurance or assets behind them. A civil claim needs a defendant worth suing.

The offender rarely is. That changes where a venue, employer or landlord failed to keep people safe. You can bring an inadequate security assault claim against the occupier of a venue. The same goes for a claim over violence and assault at work, where the employer owes a duty of care.

Choosing between the routes is a strategic decision, not an administrative one. The head to head comparison, the evidential differences and the sequencing sit on criminal injuries compensation vs civil claim. So what does it cost to get that decision right? What legal help costs, and how a solicitor may charge for it, comes next.

At this point, you'll need to decide whether to apply to the Scheme alone or run a civil claim beside it.

Most victims of violent crime have no one worth suing. That is the gap the State scheme was built to fill. It is why a modest award is still worth applying for.

What does legal help cost in a Scheme application?

The Scheme does not pay your legal costs. That's the plain position, and hardly anyone hears it before they start.

Applying itself costs nothing. The European Commission’s e-Justice entry for Ireland answers the question of administrative or other charges on a claim with a flat no ²². Citizens Information and the Law Reform Commission both confirm separately that the Tribunal cannot award legal costs ^{7 26}.

So who pays the solicitor? An award covers your loss from the crime, and it doesn't cover the cost of applying. You can apply without a solicitor, and many people do.

Cost is the second question almost everyone asks, right after whether they qualify. The answer changes what people decide. A modest award can be worth less than the effort of chasing it.

A personal injury claim works differently on costs. That is part of why people compare the two routes so often.

Irish law limits how a solicitor can charge for this work. Section 149(1)(a) of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015 (Irish Statute Book) [6] bars charging a percentage of the award as a fee. A narrow exception applies to debt and liquidated demand cases, which a Scheme application is not. Section 150 separately obliges a solicitor to give you written notice of likely charges at the outset.

Has the Tribunal ever paid legal or report costs?

Published decisions bear that out. In decision 54685 the Tribunal disallowed the applicant’s legal costs along with flights and sundry expenses ¹¹. It allowed only the vouched treatment costs it could link directly to the assault.

One narrow exception exists, and it's narrower than it first sounds. Under Instruction 4 [25] the Tribunal may, in exceptional circumstances, reimburse vouched costs for expert reports.

Three conditions gate it. The application must have been refused, the reports must have been obtained at the Tribunal’s own request or direction, and the circumstances must be exceptional. It covers report costs, not legal costs, so it changes nothing about the position above.

Ask for the section 150 notice in writing before any work begins. Ask what happens to the fee if the Tribunal refuses the application, and get the answer in writing. Fee arrangements differ between firms, so compare them rather than assuming they're the same.

A percentage of your award is not a lawful way to charge for this work in Ireland. Anyone quoting one is quoting something the statute does not allow.

What changes next for the Scheme?

The Scheme is under review on three fronts at once. The Law Reform Commission published LRC 130, Compensating Victims of Crime [9] on 23 March 2026. The report called the current arrangements unfit for purpose.

The report recommends replacing the administrative scheme with a statutory one. It attaches a draft Bill. Recommendations are not law, and the Oireachtas has enacted none of this.

The Commission's model would split the work three ways: an information and assistive tier to help victims put an application together, an assessment and adjudication tier to decide it, and an appeals tier to hear challenges. An independent body would run the new system, and the Commission does not name it.

The definition of harm would widen beyond physical injury. The proposed deadline is two years, with exceptions, so a child could apply until two years after turning eighteen, and the report proposes a discretionary power to admit applications out of time up to ten years.

Government approval of an amendment on 14 April 2026 is the second front. That amendment aims to bring pain and suffering inside the Scheme.

On 27 July 2026 gov.ie recorded that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme was amended and published, and that the amended Scheme removes the previous Scheme's exclusion of compensation for pain and suffering ¹. The amended Scheme also states that the amount awarded shall be within guidance as issued by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, makes arrangements for applications submitted before 27 July 2026 that have not been finalised, and provides transitional arrangements for late applications.

Litigation is the third front. The lead case, brought in 2019, was managed in the High Court by Egan J, who referred the legal issues to the Court of Justice. That case settled in February 2026.

Seven further High Court actions against the Tribunal, the Minister, Ireland and the Attorney General had been issued by 3 April 2026, when they were reported.

Two things are worth watching if this matters to you. The gov.ie Scheme page is where the amended text and any further change to it appear first ¹. Any statutory scheme would need legislation first, and no Bill has been introduced in the Oireachtas, though the Law Reform Commission has published a draft Compensation for Victims of Crimes of Violence Bill 2026 with its report. We last checked this section on 27 July 2026.

How Gary Matthews Solicitors can help

Most of the work in a Scheme application is evidence. Gary Matthews Solicitors are personal injury solicitors in Dublin, acting for clients across Ireland.

On a Scheme application the firm gathers the medical and earnings evidence. It prepares the application and deals with the Tribunal's letters. Where a civil claim may also be open, the firm assesses that at the same time.

Vouching a Scheme loss runs in four steps. We call this the Four-Step Vouching Framework. Step one proves the incident, usually through the Garda reference. Step two proves the injury, through medical records covering the period after the crime.

Step three proves the money, through receipts, invoices and payslips that show what the injury actually cost. Step four proves the gap, by identifying what sick pay, insurance or social welfare already covered, because the Scheme deducts those.

Step four is the one applicants typically miss, and it is where the Four-Step Vouching Framework earns its place. An application that documents loss without documenting deductions invites a reduced award. Working the Four-Step Vouching Framework in order keeps the deduction question visible from the start.

A first conversation is about whether you have a route at all. That means checking the date of the incident against the time limit. It means confirming the Garda reference exists, and working out whether a civil claim sits alongside the Scheme. Where none of those stack up, the firm says so.

The firm explains fees in writing before any work starts, as section 150 requires. It makes no promise about the outcome of any application, because no one honestly can.

Common questions

Fifteen questions come up in almost every first conversation. Each answer starts with the short version, then explains what sits behind it.

A nil award is not a finding that nothing happened. It is a finding that nothing was spent.

Related questions

Three questions sit next to this topic without belonging to it. Each one has its own page, and the short answer is here.

Does the Scheme cover injuries from a road traffic incident?

Ordinary road traffic injuries fall outside the Scheme, because it doesn't treat negligent driving as a crime of violence. Deliberate use of a vehicle to injure someone is different. A deliberate running-down can fall inside the Scheme.

Most road traffic injuries in Ireland run as civil claims instead, through the Injuries Resolution Board and then the courts. Which route applies turns on whether the driving was deliberate. The three routes above are the frame for working that out.

Are there separate arrangements for Gardai and prison officers?

Yes, separate arrangements cover members of An Garda Síochána and prison officers who are hurt on duty in Ireland. Gardaí come under the statutory scheme in the Garda Síochána (Compensation) Act 2022, which the State Claims Agency administers and which sits entirely outside the Tribunal. Prison officers come under a second scheme that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal itself administers alongside the general Scheme this page covers. Payments to prison officers appear on their own, at €4.1 million in the most recent reported year, as reported by Irish Legal News [28].

Anyone hurt on duty should check which arrangement applies. The page on who can claim criminal injuries compensation marks the boundary.

How many people apply to the Scheme each year?

Applicants made 229 general Scheme applications in 2024, the most recent reported year, and general Scheme applications rose about 40 per cent on 2023. Applications to the separate prison officers' scheme fell over the same period, so the rise across both schemes together was smaller. The Scheme paid just over €10 million to 203 applicants²⁸.

The Central Statistics Office (Updated 2025) [8] recorded 6,101 victims of assault and related offences in Q2 2025 alone. Against roughly 24,000 recorded victims a year, that is about one application for every hundred.

The comparison sets 2024 applications against 2025 recorded victims of one CSO offence group, not against people eligible under the Scheme. That means it is an approximation, not an eligibility rate. It does show that far fewer people use the Scheme than the level of violent crime in Ireland would suggest.

References

Every figure on this page traces to one of twenty-eight sources. Numbers in square brackets above match the numbered entries below. We checked each source between 24 July 2026 and 27 July 2026.

1. Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, gov.ie (Updated 27 July 2026) and Terms and conditions of the Scheme, gov.ie. Source for the Scheme text effective 31 January 2025, for the make-up of the Tribunal, for the amendment Government approved on 14 April 2026, and for the notice of 27 July 2026 recording that the amended Scheme was published, that it removes the exclusion of compensation for pain and suffering, that awards are to be within guidance issued by the Minister, and that transitional arrangements apply to pending and late applications.
2. Decisions by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal, gov.ie (Updated September 2025). Source for the published decisions this page describes, covering 2011 to 2024.
3. Case C-284/24, Court of Justice of the European Union, judgment of 2 October 2025 (EUR-Lex). Source for the ruling on financial loss only compensation. It also records the €645.62 award the Court set out at paragraph 13.
4. Directive 2004/80/EC, Article 12(2) (EUR-Lex). Source for the compensation standard a member state scheme has to meet.
5. Criminal Justice Act 1993, section 6 (Irish Statute Book). Source for the compensation orders criminal courts make against convicted offenders.
6. Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, sections 149 and 150 (Irish Statute Book). Source for the bar on percentage fees. It also sets the written notice of charges a solicitor must give.
7. Compensation for victims of crime, Citizens Information (Updated April 2025). Procedural background only, and last edited on 11 April 2025.
8. Recorded Crime Victims of Assault and Related Offences by Age and Sex, Q2 2025, Central Statistics Office (Updated 2025). Source for the 6,101 recorded victims in the comparison above.
9. Compensating Victims of Crime, LRC 130, Law Reform Commission (23 March 2026). Source for the recommendation to put the Scheme on a statutory footing. It also sets out the three-tier model described above.
10. Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme: your questions answered, gov.ie (Updated 2026). Source for the eligibility category covering assistance in preventing a reported crime or saving human life. Also the source for the bar on recovering State-funded treatment and prescription costs, and for what the Tribunal says holds cases up.
11. Decision 54685, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (9 May 2023), gov.ie. Source for the itemised award of €3,170.76, for the €200 deduction, and for the refusal of legal costs and of items with no proved causal link.
12. Decision 53823, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (26 July 2024), gov.ie. Source for the extension of time on evidence of psychological impairment, and for the €73,671 award.
13. Decision 52951, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (10 February 2023), gov.ie. Source for the nil award following a late application and a failure to furnish requested information.
14. Access to compensation in cross-border cases, gov.ie (Updated September 2025). Source for the designation of the Tribunal as Ireland’s Transmitting and Receiving Authority. Also the source for the handling of applications by the state where the incident occurred, and for the position of visitors injured in Ireland.
15. Decision 51760, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (16 August 2022), gov.ie. Source for the text of Paragraph 12 of the Scheme on provocation and partial responsibility, as quoted by the Tribunal. The Scheme has been renumbered, and the decision records this provision as Paragraph 12, formerly Paragraph 13.
16. Decision 53979, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (13 September 2023), gov.ie. Source for the refusal of an award where no evidence was put before the Tribunal on which responsibility could be apportioned.
17. Personal injury compensation payments, Revenue (Updated May 2026). Source for the naming of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal among personal injury compensation payments. Also the source for the wording that such a payment may not be taxable.
18. Decision 10570, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (16 August 2022), gov.ie. Source for the acceptance of an application made many years late, on the recognition in law that a person can remain under a disability, and for the award of €25,810, of which €25,000 was general damages. The length of the delay and the date of the abuse are both redacted in the published decision. The file predates the removal of general damages on 1 April 1986, so it does not represent the position under the Scheme text that ran from 1986 to 27 July 2026.
19. Civil Liability Act 1961, section 49, Revised Acts, Law Reform Commission. Source for the €35,000 ceiling on compensation for mental distress to dependants. The figure was substituted by the Civil Liability Act 1961 (Section 49) Order 2014, S.I. No. 6 of 2014, in operation 11 January 2014. That Order returned a 403 error on the Irish Statute Book and could not be read directly.
20. Decision 54644, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (7 May 2022), gov.ie. Source for the text of paragraph 8 of the Scheme, quoted verbatim by the Tribunal, and for the interim award of €30,000. The Scheme document itself sits on a host that disallows crawling, so its wording is taken from the Tribunal’s own quotation of it.
21. Decision 23970, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (27 October 2022), gov.ie. Source for the interim award of €100,000 held in trust, for the total award of €1,539,233.60, and for an award made where the assailant was a person unknown to the applicant.
22. If my claim is to be considered in this country, Ireland, European e-Justice Portal, European Commission (last updated 29 July 2024). Source for the position that an application may succeed where the offender has not been identified or convicted, provided the crime was reported, and for the answer that no administrative or other charge is payable when a claim is received and processed.
23. Decision 53871, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (1 May 2022), gov.ie. Source for the Scheme’s own wording on the 1 April 1986 cut-off, quoted verbatim by the Tribunal, and for an award of €72,217.75 made while a Garda investigation was still running.
24. Decision 51988, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal (22 November 2023), gov.ie. Source for the identification of paragraph 6(e) of the Scheme as the provision that excludes general damages for pain and suffering.
25. Instruction 4: Report costs incurred at the request or direction of Tribunal, Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal, gov.ie (published 1 July 2021, last updated 7 October 2022). Source for the discretion to reimburse vouched expert report costs. The discretion arises only where an award is refused, only where the reports were obtained at the Tribunal’s request or direction, and only in exceptional circumstances.
26. Compensating Victims of Crime, Law Reform Commission Consultation Paper LRC CP 67-2022. Source, independently of gov.ie, for the three-month application period, for the two-year ceiling on the Tribunal’s discretion to extend it, for the 1 April 1986 exclusion of pain and suffering at paragraphs 1.20 and 1.32, and for the position that awards do not reimburse legal fees at paragraph 1.18. The Paper also records, at footnote 18 to paragraph 1.16, that no duly authorised officers of the Tribunal were then in post.
27. Violent crime victims to receive increased State compensation after European court ruling, The Irish Times, 20 February 2026. Source for the reported figure of around €60,000 the State agreed to pay the applicant in the C-284/24 case, plus legal costs.
28. Significant increase in applications for criminal injuries compensation, Irish Legal News, 26 September 2025. Source, reporting the Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal’s 2024 annual report, for the 229 general-scheme applications, the roughly 40 per cent rise in new applications, the just over €10 million paid to 203 applicants, and the €4.1 million paid under the separate prison-officer scheme.

Where this page refers to published decisions, the source is the Tribunal’s own decisions collection on gov.ie ². The Scheme text sits on gov.ie as a downloadable document on a host that disallows automated retrieval, not as a linkable page. Where this page gives a paragraph number of the Scheme, that number is taken from the Tribunal's own quotation of the Scheme in a published decision, not read from the Scheme document. The decisions are not consistent with one another on numbering: decision 51760 gives the provocation provision as paragraph 12, formerly paragraph 13, while decision 53979 a year later gives it as paragraph 13. Paragraph numbers may in any event have changed in the Scheme as amended on 27 July 2026.

Bowes v The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal; Brophy v The Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal [2022] IEHC 703 appears by neutral citation. Neutral citation is how the court and law reporting databases locate a judgment.