Four routes, not two: what you are choosing between

After a violent crime in Ireland there are four separate ways compensation can reach you, not two. They are the State Scheme, a compensation order, and two civil claims. This page is here to help you understand and pursue compensation for injury in Ireland after a crime.

A civil claim brought after an assault is still a personal injury claim. It is not the kind most people picture, because there is usually no insurer standing behind the person who hurt you. Ordinary personal injury claims in Ireland nearly always have one.

The Scheme is the State route, set out in the published Terms and conditions of the scheme, gov.ie (Updated July 2026) [02]. A compensation order comes from the criminal court that convicts him. The two civil claims run against the attacker himself, or against whoever else should have kept you safe.

Our guide to criminal injuries compensation in Ireland sets out the three routes. That count treats a civil claim as one route, which is the right level for a page introducing the Scheme. Here it splits in two. Who you sue decides whether there's any money behind the claim, so the two are worth separating.

The three routes and the four are the same ground, counted at different depths. More than one can be open to you at once, which Compensation for victims of crime, Citizens Information (Updated April 2025) [03] states plainly. You can't be paid twice for the same loss. The Tribunal says so itself in Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme: Your questions answered (Updated July 2026) [01].

Two exceptions are worth naming, and they are not the same scheme. A Garda injured on duty by a malicious incident claims under the Garda Siochana (Compensation) Act 2022 [19], which commenced on 10 April 2023 and sends those claims to the Board for assessment. A prison officer injured on duty comes under the separate Scheme of Compensation for Personal Injuries Criminally Inflicted on Prison Officers, administered by the same Tribunal that runs the Scheme discussed here, and administered by it since 1990. Either way, those cases follow their own rules rather than this comparison.

Back to top

The Seven-Factor Route Comparison

Seven factors separate the four routes to compensation, and two of them usually decide the answer. They are what a route can pay for, and whether the money ever reaches you. The grid below sets each route against each factor, so you weigh one factor at a time rather than four routes at once.

We call this the Seven-Factor Route Comparison. Read it across rather than down. A column describes one route, which is what every other page on this question already gives you. A row shows how the four routes differ on the one factor you are weighing, and that's what you can't get elsewhere.

The comparison turns on seven factors. They are what each route pays for, who you claim against, what you must prove, the time limit, whether payment arrives, the cost of failing, and how the routes interact.

Two rows carry more weight than the other five. The first is the kind of loss a route can compensate. A route that cannot reach the financial loss you suffered is the wrong route, however well it performs on the rest.

The fifth is whether the money is likely to arrive. An award in your favour and a payment in your bank are not the same thing. A judgment nobody can enforce leaves you where the attack left you.

Most readers arrive at the comparison focused on the third factor, which is what you must establish and to what standard. Proof matters, and it rarely determines which route closes. A route usually falls away for one of two reasons. It cannot compensate the loss you are carrying, or the person liable has no resources behind them.

The compensation order column is the one most readers have never been offered. Irish guidance ordinarily presents this decision as a choice between the State scheme and a civil claim, which omits the compensation order entirely. Four available routes become two before anybody has examined the circumstances.

No factor here ranks the routes against one another. More than one may remain open to you simultaneously, and later sections examine what happens when you pursue two of them together. Use the Seven-Factor Route Comparison to narrow the options open to you rather than to decide between them. Compensation after an assault in Ireland depends on circumstances no comparison can resolve.

Back to top

What can each route actually pay for?

Every route can now reach both kinds of loss, but they do not measure them the same way. Until 27 July 2026 the Scheme paid vouched financial loss only, and that gap drove most route decisions. The amended Scheme removes the exclusion ³⁰. What remains different is who sets the figure, and whether anyone is there to pay it.

One head of loss works differently again, and it does not apply to a living claimant's own injury. In fatal cases dependants may currently be awarded up to a maximum of EUR 35,000 for mental distress, a figure provided for under the Civil Liability Acts and set by statutory instrument under section 49(1A) of the Civil Liability Act 1961, and therefore capable of change ⁰¹. Everywhere else on this page, vouched financial loss means what it says: money the injury cost you, evidenced by receipts and records.

Why the Scheme left pain and suffering out for forty years

The exclusion was a budget decision, not a judgement about victims. Compensation for general damages, meaning the pain and suffering itself, was removed from the Scheme by amendment in 1986, and it did not come back until 2026.

The reason is on the public record. It appears in the Law Reform Commission's Consultation Paper on Compensating Victims of Crime, LRC CP 67-2022 (checked July 2026) [08]. That paper records that the terms of the Scheme were amended in 1986 to remove compensation for general damages "due to the significant cost of operating the Scheme on the State". Cost drove it. The Commission published its final report in March 2026 ¹⁶.

Knowing that changes how you read the history. The Scheme was not silent on pain and suffering because the loss was thought unreal. It was silent because of a funding decision taken four decades ago.

Why that exclusion was removed

The Court of Justice of the European Union held in October 2025 that the exclusion breached EU law. That ruling, rather than a change of policy, is what put the amendment on the Department's desk.

The case was LD v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal, Case C-284/24, decided on 2 October 2025 [15]. The applicant suffered a significant eye injury in a violent assault, resulting in a permanent partial loss of vision, along with injuries to his jawbone, left shoulder, left arm, waist and chest, and he maintained that he also suffers from mental distress and anxiety. He was awarded EUR 645.62 in respect of the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by him as a direct result of that crime, and nothing else. The reference came from the High Court of Ireland; the domestic decision making it is Blanco v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal [2024] IEHC 171.

The Court held that Article 12(2) of Directive 2004/80 must be interpreted as precluding a national scheme on compensation to victims of violent intentional crimes which, as a matter of principle, excludes, as regards non-material harm, any compensation for pain and suffering endured by such victims. Fair and appropriate compensation, in the Court's words, "requires, when determining such compensation, that account be taken of the seriousness of the consequences, for the victims, of the crimes committed and of the reparation that such victims may obtain on the basis of the tortious liability of the offender" ¹⁵. The second limb of that sentence matters here, because it ties the adequacy of a State award to what the victim could have recovered in tort.

The Scheme as it then stood was held incompatible with EU law on this point, and that is the gap the State has now closed.

The Government decided on 14 April 2026 to amend the Scheme, and the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration then finalised amendments making provision for damages for pain and suffering ⁰². The amended Scheme was published on 27 July 2026 ³⁰. It also provides that the amount the Tribunal awards shall be within guidance issued by the Minister, and it makes transitional arrangements both for applications already submitted and for the acceptance of late applications by specified dates. Those arrangements are new, and how they apply to a particular application is a question to put to a solicitor.

Reform was already being examined separately. In March 2026 the Law Reform Commission published its Report on Compensating Victims of Crime [16], which recommends replacing the present administrative scheme with a statutory one administered by an independent body, and which publishes a draft Compensation for Victims of Crimes of Violence Bill 2026. The report is numbered LRC 130-2026 and was published on 23 March 2026.

Two of its recommendations would change the ground this page covers. The new scheme would compensate pain and suffering through general compensation payments set in bands, and the application window would become two years from the crime, with late applications possible for up to ten years where there is good reason for the delay. A Law Reform Commission recommendation is not law, and none of this has been enacted.

None of the Commission's recommendations changes what the Tribunal can award today. What governs an application made now is the Scheme as amended on 27 July 2026.

What that leaves on the table in an assault case

In most assault claims the pain and suffering is the larger figure. A single punch can cause months of pain and very little measurable expense. Months of pain are not an expense. A civil claim reaches both, and since July 2026 so does the Scheme, though the two arrive at the figure by different routes.

Unlike in England and Wales, in Ireland general damages are assessed by reference to the Personal Injuries Guidelines published by the Judicial Council ²⁶. The Judicial College Guidelines do not apply here.

The operative Guidelines are still the ones adopted on 6 March 2021, which apply to claims assessed on or after 24 April 2021. The Judicial Council completed its first review and put forward draft amendments carrying an uplift of about 16.7 per cent. Those amendments require approval by resolution of both Houses of the Oireachtas, and that approval has not been given. The position is not that approval is awaited: the Minister for Justice confirmed in July 2025 that he would not bring the draft amended Guidelines to the Oireachtas for approval, and although they were laid before both Houses in September 2025 no resolution was moved. The General Scheme of a Judicial Council (Amendment) Bill, which would change how future revisions are approved and extend the review cycle from three years to five, was published in January 2026 and completed pre-legislative scrutiny in February 2026; the Bill itself had not been published as at July 2026. Until something changes, the 2021 figures are the ones a court works from.

A court values the injury itself by working from those Guidelines. Our guide to damages in Irish personal injury law sets out the categories and the cap.

Nothing here says the Scheme is the wrong route. It reaches claimants a civil claim cannot help, and it doesn't depend on the attacker having money. The point is narrower than that. Two routes that both pay do not measure the loss the same way, and only one of them depends on a defendant with assets.

Whatever the route, the compensation itself is not taxed, though what it later earns can be. A sum obtained by means of compensation or damages for any wrong or injury suffered by an individual in his or her person is not a chargeable gain, whether it comes from the Tribunal or from a civil award, under section 613(1)(c) of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, Irish Statute Book [13]. Income later generated by the award, such as interest or investment income, is taxable in the ordinary way, unless the narrow exemption at section 189 of the same Act applies, which requires the individual to be permanently and totally incapacitated from maintaining himself or herself and the income to be his or her sole or main income ³¹. Damages for loss of earnings are separately assessed net of the tax that would have been paid on those earnings. Tax falls the same way across all four routes, so it is not part of the comparison.

The full detail of what the Scheme does reach is set out in what the Scheme covers. Read it before you decide. Which route fits depends on what your loss is made of.

Back to top

Who would you be claiming against in each route?

The Scheme pays from State funds. A compensation order and a civil claim run against a person or a business, and that difference decides most things. Ask who is on the other side before you ask anything else. The answer determines what your award is worth.

Under the Scheme you are not suing anybody, and there's no defendant on the other side for you to identify. You apply to a Tribunal and the State pays what it awards, out of a cash-limited grant scheme with an annual budget set and provided by the Oireachtas ⁰². The Scheme is not statutory, but awards are no longer made on an ex gratia basis: gov.ie states that where the incident occurred on or after 1 January 2006, awards are not made on an ex gratia basis, and the 2021 amendments removed references to compensation being ex gratia ⁰¹. Nobody has to be traced, served or found solvent. That advantage is structural.

A compensation order runs against the person convicted of the offence. The criminal court makes it, and you aren't a party to that case. Your role there is witness, not claimant. The order is made against whatever means that person actually has.

The civil route is really two routes, and most Irish guidance presents it as a single option. You can bring a civil claim against the attacker personally. Or you can sue a business that owed you a duty, such as the pub, club or employer where it happened. Those are different cases with different defendants.

Each limb has a page of its own on this website. Where a venue let it happen, read our guide to claims for inadequate security. Where it happened at work, the employer limb is set out at violence and assault at work. This page stops at identifying them.

Identifying the defendant matters because of what stands behind them. A pub, a club or an employer in Ireland usually carries liability insurance. An individual attacker almost never does. That single fact separates two cases that look identical on paper.

In an ordinary personal injury claim the insurer pays and enforcement rarely arises. A judgment against the attacker personally has no insurer behind it, so whether it's worth anything depends entirely on what they own.

Suing the person who attacked you and applying to the Scheme are different propositions for that reason. Whether a judgment can be collected is taken up later on this page.

The Scheme never asks that question at all. It asks what happened to you and what the injury cost, not who is able to pay. That is why it remains open when the civil route closes.

Back to top

What do you have to prove in each forum?

A civil court decides on the balance of probabilities, which is a lower standard than a criminal court applies. So an acquittal does not stop you. A criminal court must be sure beyond reasonable doubt. The Scheme asks something different again, because it has no defendant to test.

The standard itself is stated at Proceedings in civil court cases, Citizens Information (Updated January 2025) [04]. That page puts the test as more likely than not that the wrongdoing happened and caused your injuries and losses. It doesn't ask whether anyone was prosecuted. A decision not to prosecute isn't a finding that nothing happened.

A compensation order made in the criminal court works the other way round entirely. It can only follow a conviction, which means the criminal standard has already been met before the order exists.

Where a prosecution failed, or was never brought, that route simply closes. The civil one stays open.

The Scheme isn't a contest between two sides at all. There is no defendant here, and nothing to disprove. What the Tribunal weighs is your evidence, meaning the injury and every item of loss you are claiming. It decides what your evidence establishes.

It asks one thing before any of that, though, and it is the condition most often missed. The incident must have been reported to An Garda Siochana without delay, and you must have co-operated fully with the investigation ⁰¹. Where the person complained of is a member of An Garda Siochana, the report goes to Fiosru, the police ombudsman, instead. No amount of medical evidence substitutes for that report, and there is no published number of days attached to the phrase without delay. If the assault was never reported, say so when you take advice rather than after an application is refused.

The forums differ in one more way that weighs on many people. A civil action is heard in public, because Article 34 of the Constitution, Irish Statute Book [14] requires that justice be administered in public, save in such special and limited cases as may be prescribed by law. A Scheme application is not a court case. At first instance the application is determined on the documents you send in, with no hearing, and where the amount involved does not exceed EUR 3,000 that decision may be made by a duly authorised officer of the Tribunal rather than by the Tribunal itself ⁰¹. If you appeal, a panel of three Tribunal members holds an oral hearing, which is held in private and may be held remotely or onsite ⁰¹. For someone who would rather not give an account in a public courtroom, that can matter as much as the standard of proof.

None of that depends on the criminal process running its course first. Ireland's own victim support service states the civil route in exactly the same plain terms. If you know who harmed you, it is possible to file a claim against them in civil court. That is the wording used at Compensation, Crime Victims Helpline (Updated February 2024) [10].

Most Irish injury claims start with the Personal Injuries Resolution Board, which is the name given to it on 14 December 2023 in place of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, and which operates and brands itself as the Injuries Resolution Board [27]. An assault based claim is not exempt from that step merely because it was an assault. Section 3 of the PIAB Act 2003 [17] lists the civil actions the Act applies to, and its residual category at paragraph (d) carves out only actions arising out of the provision of a health service, the carrying out of a medical or surgical procedure, or the provision of medical advice or treatment. An assault claim is not in that carve-out. Section 4 [18] then takes a claim outside the Act's definition of a civil action in a small number of situations, the widest of which is where the plaintiff genuinely also claims relief for another cause of action, and expressly not where that is done to get around section 3. Constitutional claims and claims under the European Convention on Human Rights Act 2003 are also outside it. Whether your claim needs an authorisation turns on how it is pleaded, so take advice before assuming it does not.

One set of facts, then, meets three different tests. Failing the criminal one doesn't mean failing the other two. What can still defeat a claim that has cleared its own standard of proof is time.

Back to top

The three clocks

Three separate limitation periods can run at once after an assault in Ireland, and the shortest of them is the Scheme's. Being outside one does not put you outside the others. Missing the three month Scheme window does not close a civil claim, or a compensation order.

They work like the three clocks, set going together. Each starts on the same event, and each runs at its own speed.

The Scheme clock: three months, extendable to two years

The Scheme clock is the shortest of the three, and it starts on the day of the incident. Three months is the ordinary window. It doesn't wait for a charge, a trial or a verdict. A prosecution that takes a year to reach court will not hold the clock open.

The window isn't absolute. The Tribunal can accept a late application up to a maximum of two years after the incident. The Tribunal does that where it considers the circumstances justify exceptional treatment ⁰¹⁰³. Nobody is entitled to the extra time.

The figures above are as at 3 July 2026, which is when the Department last updated its guidance. Deadlines move, and yours may already be running. Check your own dates with a solicitor rather than against this page. Our guide to criminal injuries compensation time limits sets out what the Tribunal looks for in a late application.

Eleven months after an assault, many readers assume they are too late. On the Scheme clock that's true, unless the Tribunal is persuaded to extend the window. On the civil clocks it isn't.

What "exceptional circumstances" has been held to mean

The High Court has said the discretion must be read broadly, liberally and generously. The Scheme itself does not publish a list of what will persuade the Tribunal, and neither does the Department. The courts have said more about it than the guidance has.

In Bowes v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal; Brophy v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal [2022] IEHC 703, delivered by Holland J on 20 December 2022, the Court held that the exceptional treatment discretion must be interpreted broadly, liberally and generously, and responsively to the circumstances of the victim of crime in each case ²². Note also that the applicants' equivalence argument, comparing the two year cap with the six year tort period, was rejected; it was the effectiveness argument, on the absence of transitional provisions, that succeeded.

One point matters more than the rest to anyone reading this late. On the Law Society Gazette's reading of the judgment, not knowing the Scheme existed will not automatically count as exceptional, but neither can it be ruled out as a reason, depending on the circumstances ²². That is a commentator's analysis of what the judgment means rather than a phrase quoted from it, so treat it as a direction of travel and not as a rule.

The same judgment addressed the two year cap itself. That cap was introduced by the Scheme that took effect on 20 April 2021, replacing a discretion that had no outer limit, and it was applied without a transitional period for people whose applications were already outside it ²². The State responded administratively rather than by appeal: the Scheme was amended so that for twelve months from 31 January 2024 late applications were accepted in respect of injuries sustained between 30 June 2005 and 20 April 2021. That remedial window has closed. The Scheme as amended on 27 July 2026 makes fresh transitional arrangements for the acceptance of late applications by specified dates.

A second case from the same year, Earls v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal [2022] IEHC 679, quashed a Tribunal decision on two separate grounds. The Tribunal had applied a subjective rather than an objective test to an element of the underlying offence, and it had separately failed to assess whether the conduct amounted to a crime of violence in the circumstances of that case ²². The decision was sent back to a differently constituted Tribunal.

None of that makes a late application safe. What it means is that a late application is a case to be argued on its own facts, rather than a form to be posted late and hoped for. That is a difference worth taking advice on.

The two civil clocks, and why they are not the same length

The two civil clocks do not run for the same length of time, and the difference turns on how the claim is framed. Unlike in England and Wales, in Ireland the ordinary personal injury limitation period is two years rather than three.

Two years applies to a claim in negligence against a venue, an occupier or an employer. The rule sits in the Statute of Limitations 1957 as later amended. The Law Society of Ireland traces the same period to the 1991 amendment in its Periods of limitation, common types of action (checked July 2026) [09]. Our page on personal injury claim time limits works through it.

A claim framed differently has been treated differently. In Devlin v Roche [2002] IESC 34, [2002] 2 IR 360 the Supreme Court held that the phrase "breach of duty" does not cover intentional trespass to the person. An intentional assault therefore fell outside the shorter personal injuries period, which at that time ran for three years rather than the two that applies now. The Law Reform Commission records that holding in its Report on Limitation of Actions, LRC 104-2011 (December 2011) [07].

On that reasoning the assault claim in Devlin attracted the six year period under section 11(2)(a) of the Statute of Limitations 1957 [24]. No legislation since has reversed that holding. The two year period was set by section 7(a) of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004, which came into force on 31 March 2005 ²³. It substituted a new subsection into the 1991 Act, reducing three years to two while reproducing the operative words the Supreme Court had been construing. How your claim is framed still decides which clock applies, and that is a question for a solicitor rather than for this page.

In 2011 the Commission called that disparity difficult to justify, given that the ingredients of the respective torts are virtually identical.

The practical point here isn't really the number itself. Where a civil claim against the attacker is available, the civil clocks run longer than the Scheme's three months. That is not time in hand. Only a solicitor working from your dates can tell you which period you are on.

Being inside a clock is only the first question. Where more than one route stays open, running two of them together brings its own set of rules.

Back to top

What happens if you run more than one route

Two separate rules stop you being paid twice under Irish law, and they work in opposite directions. Run the criminal route first and section 9 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 reduces the civil award that follows. Apply to the Scheme after you have already been paid from another source, and the Tribunal reduces or refuses its own award instead. The order you ran them in decides which rule bites.

What section 9 does to a civil award

Section 9 of the Criminal Justice Act 1993 caps the civil damages at the excess. A civil court assessing damages for the same injury can award only the amount above what the compensation order already paid. That cap applies once a criminal court has made a compensation order in your favour.

Section 6 of the same Act had already set a ceiling of its own. A compensation order cannot exceed the damages that, in the opinion of the court, the injured party would be entitled to recover in a civil action against the convicted person ⁰⁶. That is the court's own assessment rather than a civil award already made. Section 6(2) carries a second and separate cap for the District Court, which is dealt with further down this page. The criminal order was never designed to outrun the civil measure.

Two further consequences follow, and neither one is obvious from the headline rule. The court can also order repayment, where the order paid you more than the civil damages come to. You'd be repaying the person who attacked you. And on the award of those damages, the compensation order ceases to have effect.

9. — Where—

(a) a compensation order has been made in favour of a person, and

(b) damages in respect of the injury or loss concerned fall to be assessed in civil proceedings,

then—

(i) if the damages, as so assessed, exceed any amount paid under the compensation order, the damages awarded shall not exceed the amount of that excess, and

(ii) if any amount paid under the compensation order exceeds the damages, as so assessed, the court may order that the amount of the excess be repaid by that person to the person against whom the compensation order was made,

and, upon the award of damages or, as the case may be, the making of the order by the court, the compensation order shall cease to have effect.

That closing clause is the part most readers miss. A compensation order isn't a floor that a civil award later sits on top of. It behaves more like an interim payment, which the civil assessment absorbs and then cancels. Irish law treats the two awards as one.

What the Tribunal does when you have been paid elsewhere

The Tribunal can reduce its award to nothing, and it decides that for itself. It may decide that no award should be made, or that the award should be reduced by a certain amount ⁰¹. That discretion opens once you've been compensated for the same injury from another source.

Notice how far that sits from section 9. Section 9 is arithmetic, worked by a civil court on a figure it has just assessed. The Scheme's rule is a discretion, exercised by the Tribunal on facts you're expected to disclose. One is automatic and the other is a judgement call.

Timing doesn't work that way here. In practice the secretariat will usually hold your application back from the Tribunal while civil or criminal proceedings arising from the same incident are ongoing, so your file waits until the outcome is known ⁰¹. That is how the Tribunal describes its own working practice rather than a rule of the Scheme.

Citizens Information states the principle plainly. Its guidance is that you can seek compensation under both routes, but you cannot be doubly compensated for any losses you have suffered ⁰³.

Neither offset rule reaches the question underneath both of them. Whether the person who injured you has anything to pay with is a separate problem.

Back to top

Who actually pays at the end

In an ordinary personal injuries claim an insurer pays the judgment. A judgment against the person who assaulted you has no insurer behind it. What that person owns then decides whether the judgment is worth anything, and the Scheme doesn't work that way at all.

Most personal injuries claims in Ireland never reach an enforcement question. An insurer, the Motor Insurers' Bureau or the State Claims Agency pays what the court awards. Payment is automatic in the ordinary case. Our page on how judgments are enforced opens on exactly that point.

Sue the person who assaulted you personally and you step straight outside that system. There's no insurer standing behind an individual defendant. A judgment can be perfectly sound and still be worth nothing, because collection turns on what the defendant actually holds. The Courts Service sets out what a judgment creditor can actually do about that, from execution against goods to instalment orders and judgment mortgages ²⁸, and none of it conjures assets that are not there. Irish law builds the same question into the criminal route.

A criminal court making a compensation order must look at the offender's means. It shall have regard to his means, in the statute's own words, so far as they appear or are known to the court, and it may require evidence of them. The requirement sits at subsection 5 of Criminal Justice Act 1993, section 6, revised text (checked July 2026) [06]. Ability to pay is written into the power itself.

Unlike in England and Wales, in Ireland the civil courts are divided by monetary jurisdiction between the District, Circuit and High Courts. That division caps what a compensation order in each can award. Section 6(2) puts it as a ceiling rather than a figure. A District Court compensation order cannot exceed whatever that court's jurisdiction in tort happens to be.

The Act sets the ceiling without stating the number. The District Court page at Citizens Information (Updated September 2023) [12] records the court hearing civil claims below EUR 15,000. The Courts Service says the same on its own page for Civil claims in the District Court, Courts Service (checked July 2026) [11]. That figure was set by the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2013 and commenced in February 2014 ²¹. Where general damages are in issue a court works from the Judicial Council Personal Injuries Guidelines 2021, so what an individual claim is worth turns on the injury rather than on the ceiling.

Read that as a limit on the court, not as a measure of the injury. A compensation order made in the District Court stops at that ceiling, however the harm is later valued in a civil claim. Nothing in the figure predicts what any individual claim is worth.

Those limits are under review, and they have not moved yet. The General Scheme of the Civil Reform Bill 2025, published by the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration in January 2026 ²⁰, proposes raising the District Court's civil jurisdiction to EUR 20,000 and the Circuit Court's to EUR 100,000 including in relation to personal injuries actions, which would collapse the present split between the Circuit Court's EUR 75,000 general limit and its EUR 60,000 personal injuries limit.

That proposal has not had an easy passage. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration reported on pre-legislative scrutiny on 24 June 2026 and recommended the deletion of Part 5 of the General Scheme, which contains those increases, and recommended that any increase in the monetary jurisdictions of the lower courts should be phased, proportionate and evidence based as contemplated in the Kelly Report ²⁹. The Bill itself had not been published as at 27 July 2026. The Legislation Programme announced on 14 April 2026 lists it for priority drafting.

A General Scheme is not a Bill, and a Bill is not an Act. The figures above are the ones in force.

None of that decides anything on its own. Whether the person who harmed you can pay is one input into the route you choose. It sits alongside what each route asks of you and how long each one takes.

Back to top

How to sequence the routes

The safest order protects every clock first and decides afterwards. Nothing in the sections above tells you which route to run, and this one doesn't either, because that answer isn't general. What it offers you instead is the ordering. That order preserves the widest set of options while the facts you need are still arriving.

Protecting the shortest clock first is what the ordering is designed around. That shortest clock belongs to the Scheme. An application there forecloses nothing else at all, because a civil claim remains available and so does a compensation order. Being outside that clock alters the ordering rather than ending it.

Criminal proceedings advance on a timetable that nobody involved in them sets for your own benefit. Whether a prosecution happens at all isn't your decision. Applying to the Scheme in the interim doesn't compel a choice between the routes, because the application can be held rather than refused ⁰³. So the sequencing question is about starting order, and not about ranking the routes.

Which offset rule applies depends on the order you ran them in. Where a compensation order comes first, section 9 governs what a civil award can still add on top of the amount paid. In the reverse order a different rule applies. The Tribunal may reduce or refuse an award where compensation for the same injury has already reached you.

The Seven-Factor Route Comparison narrows which of the routes remain open to you at all. Sequencing narrows the work in front of you, because the route you start first is the one that determines what happens next. Our guide to how to apply to the Scheme documents the process from there. What this section owns is the ordering and nothing more.

None of this ordering really survives contact with the facts that only your own dates and documents can settle. Irish law provides more than one route, and it doesn't rank them. Which order fits your own circumstances is the question a solicitor can answer once your dates are in front of them.

Back to top

Related questions

References

Every source below was checked on 27 July 2026. Each entry carries the publisher, the document type and the source's own publication or update date, so you can see how current it is without leaving this page.

1. [01] Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme: Your questions answered. Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, gov.ie. Official guidance. Updated 3 July 2026.
2. [02] Terms and conditions of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, gov.ie. Scheme document and Tribunal instructions. Updated 3 July 2026.
3. [03] Compensation for victims of crime. Citizens Information Board. Public information guidance. Edited 11 April 2025.
4. [04] Proceedings in civil court cases. Citizens Information Board. Public information guidance. Edited 21 January 2025.
5. [05] Criminal Justice Act 1993, section 9: effect of compensation order on civil proceedings. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text.
6. [06] Criminal Justice Act 1993, section 6: compensation order. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text.
7. [07] Report on Limitation of Actions (LRC 104-2011). Law Reform Commission. Final report. December 2011. Source for the holding in Devlin v Roche.
8. [08] Consultation Paper on Compensating Victims of Crime (LRC CP 67-2022). Law Reform Commission. Consultation paper. 2022. Superseded by LRC 130-2026 at reference 16.
9. [09] Periods of limitation: common types of action. Law Society of Ireland. Practitioner reference table. Checked 27 July 2026.
10. [10] Compensation after a crime. Crime Victims Helpline. Victim support guidance. Updated 12 February 2024.
11. [11] Civil claims in the District Court. Courts Service of Ireland. Procedural guidance. Published 24 September 2025.
12. [12] District Court. Citizens Information Board. Public information guidance. Edited 13 September 2023.
13. [13] Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, section 613(1)(c): miscellaneous exemptions. Irish Statute Book. Primary legislation.
14. [14] Bunreacht na hEireann, Article 34: the courts. Irish Statute Book. Constitution of Ireland.
15. [15] LD v Criminal Injuries Compensation Tribunal and Others, Case C-284/24. Court of Justice of the European Union, Fifth Chamber, via EUR-Lex. Judgment of 2 October 2025.
16. [16] Report on Compensating Victims of Crime (LRC 130-2026). Law Reform Commission. Final report, including the draft Compensation for Victims of Crimes of Violence Bill 2026. Published 23 March 2026.
17. [17] Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, section 3: civil actions to which the Act applies. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text. Amended 10 April 2023.
18. [18] Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, section 4: interpretation. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text. Amended 10 April 2023.
19. [19] Garda Siochana (Compensation) Act 2022. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text to 2 April 2025. Commenced 10 April 2023.
20. [20] Civil Reform Bill to overhaul judicial review and streamline courts processes. Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, gov.ie. Announcement of the General Scheme of the Civil Reform Bill 2025. January 2026.
21. [21] Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2013 (Commencement) Order 2013, S.I. No. 566/2013. Irish Statute Book. Statutory instrument. Commenced the current District and Circuit Court civil jurisdictions on 3 February 2014.
22. [22] Just another victim. Liam O'Driscoll, Law Society Gazette. In-depth analysis of Bowes and Brophy v CICT [2022] IEHC 703 and Earls v CICT [2022] IEHC 679. 6 April 2023.
23. [23] Statute of Limitations (Amendment) Act 1991, section 3: special time limit for personal injuries actions. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text. Substituted 31 March 2005 by section 7(a) of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004.
24. [24] Statute of Limitations 1957, section 11: limitation of actions of contract and tort. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text. Cited in revised rather than as-enacted form, because the as-enacted text shows a personal injuries period that no longer applies.
25. [25] Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, section 169: costs to follow event. Law Reform Commission, Revised Acts. Primary legislation, revised text. In operation since 7 October 2019.
26. [26] Personal Injuries Guidelines. Judicial Council of Ireland. Guidelines prepared by the Personal Injuries Guidelines Committee under section 18 of the Judicial Council Act 2019 and adopted by the Judicial Council on 6 March 2021, applying to claims assessed on or after 24 April 2021. Note: the adoption power at section 7(2)(g) of the 2019 Act was held unconstitutional in Delaney v Personal Injuries Assessment Board [2024] IESC 10; the Guidelines retain the force of law by virtue of section 30 of the Family Leave and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2021.
27. [27] Injuries Resolution Board. Citizens Information Board. Public information guidance on the Personal Injuries Resolution Board. Updated 5 November 2025.
28. [28] Enforcement of debt judgments. Courts Service of Ireland. Procedural guidance on enforcing a judgment. Published 10 September 2025.
29. [30] Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, gov.ie. Campaign page recording that the amended Scheme was published on 27 July 2026 and removes the previous Scheme's exclusion of compensation for pain and suffering. Updated 27 July 2026.
30. [31] Personal injury compensation payments. Revenue Commissioners. Guidance on the exemption at section 189 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 for permanently and totally incapacitated individuals. Checked 27 July 2026.
31. [29] Report on Pre-Legislative Scrutiny of the General Scheme of the Civil Reform Bill. Joint Committee on Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Houses of the Oireachtas. Committee report. 24 June 2026.

Back to top