Mr O’Carroll said that his own firm maintains a team of 22 including eight solicitors all specialising in medical negligence
Vicky Phelan (file photo)
The legal practice operated by the lawyer who represented Vicky Phelan in the landmark High Court CervicalCheck case last year received the highest amount in medical negligence legal costs from the State at €8.83m.
New figures provided by the Minister for Health by Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD (FG) show that the State Claims Agency (SCA) last year paid Cian O’Carroll Solicitors €8.83m in costs concerning work on 32 claims in 2025.
The €8.8m followed Mr O’Carroll’s Cashel-based practice receiving €9m in 2024 for work in 33 medical negligence cases resulting in legal costs to the firm of €17.9m across the two years.
Vicky Phelan in 2019
In total, last year the SCA paid out €64.9m (all figures include 23 per cent VAT) in legal costs to plaintiff firms concerning medical negligence cases and this followed an outlay of €70.5m in 2024.
Mr O’Carroll said that the costs paid to the plaintiff firms include payments the firms make to barristers and medical experts and 23 per cent VAT.
Asked on his work for clients impacted by the CervicalCheck scandal, Mr O’Carroll said: “We have represented 14 women who have died as a result of those failings.”
He said: “I believe the number of women who have died through those screening errors is far larger, in excess of 30 lives and that is to say nothing of the hundreds injured whose lives have been changed forever.”
He added: “What is most disturbing is that new errors, within recent years, continue to come to light. The numbers now are lower because there is no audit and no way for a woman to find out if there was an error in her screening unless she goes about it herself or through a solicitor but the underlying negligent failures continue to occur.”
The detailed figures provided by Minister MacNeill in a written Dáil reply to Aidan Farrelly TD (Soc Dem) show that the second highest costs total paid to plaintiff legal firms was made to Cantillons Solicitors which received €5.86m for 18 claims followed by Michael Boylan Solicitors at €5.1m for 22 claims.
Two other firms received in excess of €3m in legal costs connected to medical negligence cases in 2025 – Callan Tansey Solicitors received €3.4m for 33 claims and Damien Tansey Solicitors received €3.37m for 24 claims.
Mr O’Carroll said that his own firm maintains a team of 22 including eight solicitors all specialising in medical negligence.
He said: “Our focus is on maintaining and improving service to our clients rather than growing the practice.”
Mr O’Carroll said: “I think the presence of the same small group of firms on the list each year shows that people affected by medical negligence tend to instruct specialist firms, particularly for the larger more complex cases.”
He said: “Cases relating to birth injuries, cancer misdiagnosis and neonatal care are incredibly complex and require the level of specialisation that these firms offer, whether you are plaintiff or defendant.”
The SCA also made €31.39m in payments to legal firms representing the Agency in medical negligence cases with Mason Hayes and Curran Solicitors receiving the highest amount at €5.49m for 216 claims followed by Hayes Solicitors LLP paid €4.49m for 118 claims; Comyn Kelleher Tobin paid €4.13m for 119 claims and Ronan Daly Jermyn LLP paid €3.6m for 157 claims.
The €31.39m paid out followed €32.45m paid out in 2024.The payments to the firms representing the SCA don’t include amounts paid out to barristers and medical experts.
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