John Dolan: If a student can get compo for covid, 5 million of us should!
Some elements of the legal industry have been known to adopt that slogan as a promise to potential clients.
And we discovered an example of how the compensation system works this week when we learned that more than 1,600 motorists who had damaged their cars on potholed roads across County Cork had claimed an average of €224 each off the local authority’s insurers over the past five years.
More power to them.
Sadly, you may not always get the payback you think you deserve.
A friend’s car was damaged by a piece of debris in the Jack Lynch Tunnel last year and an email to Cork City Council seeking redress never even warranted a response.
Tsk.
I guess a pothole and a piece of debris are not the same thing in the eyes of the law, m’lud.
Life can be unkind, and I was only pondering this with my kids during the week, when I sent my youngest boy packing to Berlin for his Transition Year school tour.
I recalled his brother going on a similar trip two years ago to the German city when he was in TY year.
But what of their oldest brother two years before that?
Well, his hopes of a trip to foreign climes were thwarted when covid arrived. His class did manage to get to Kerry - and no offence to the denizens of that beloved county, but it ain’t too exotic to a teenager who only lives half an hour away down the road.
All three of my lads had their education upended by the pandemic, just like hundreds of thousands of pupils up and down the land.
And, while we’re on the subject, covid was an incredibly stressful time too for teachers - in fact, just about every occupation was affected in some way. As for the nurses, who had to cope with a new virus, long hours, and huge numbers of patients on ventilators...
And what about those people who lost loved ones to covid and were unable to sit beside them in their dying days? Or the funerals and weddings that were stripped back to closest relatives only?
Think of the lost relationships, life’s missed opportunities, the holidays in the sun... all ruined by a virus that stopped the world in its tracks.
Even the cossetted profession of politics suffered great stresses throughout the pandemic, at least at the upper echelons, where huge restrictions on our freedoms were agreed and enforced by our leaders. What a legacy to have on your conscience, even though the large majority of people at the time backed their caution.
No, I reckon there wasn’t a single one of the five million people in this country who didn’t suffer to some degree in the pandemic.
It was reported that a law firm has been “inundated” with emails from Irish students querying whether they could be entitled to compensation because they claim their college experience was significantly disrupted by covid.
The company, Phoenix Law, is based in Belfast but operates on both north and south of the border.
It has launched a group action on behalf of students at Northern Irish universities, saying that they may be entitled to compensation for loss of educational experience, and now lots of students in the Republic are contacting them and wondering if they can apply too.
Many third-level institutions globally moved to remote or hybrid working during the pandemic, since such places would surely have been a hotbed of the virus had they stayed open. However, this clearly had an impact on studies for some - and now many are seeking redress.
The law places great emphasis on precedents, and it seems the domino effect is in motion regarding these queries about compensation.
The first domino fell when University College London in the UK recently settled a claim outside of court after a class action was taken by 6,000 students because they had paid for an education they say they did not ultimately receive.
Students and graduates - many facing debts accrued by their studies - have reportedly received sums of up to £5,000 in compensation.
On the back of that, 36 more universities in the UK have received letters about potential legal action.
The Belfast law firm are handling cases in the North, and the domino effect could now extend to claims in the Republic. It seems plenty of students here are hoping they also have a case, and the law firm is weighing up its options.
However, as this is a different jurisdiction, it won’t be straight-forward - for one, college fees here are generally lower than in the UK, and the rules governing class actions - where one or more individuals sue on behalf of a larger group of people - are different here too.
A spokesman for Phoenix Law said: “Students have suffered significant losses, including reduced quality and quantity of teaching, missed networking and academic opportunities, loss of campus facilities, and mental and emotional distress due to the inability to fully engage in university life.”
All of this may well be proved to be true.
Heaven only knows where we could end up if this domino effect of legal actions were to continue throughout Irish society.
A successful action against Irish universities, which are primarily funded by the state, would obviously have a knock-on effect on government coffers, and have an impact on the entire country.
What if other employees and sectors of society - schoolchildren, parents, pensioners, employers - then follow suit, using the law of precedent?
The claims could spread faster than the worst covid variant.
When everyone has a grievance, then the possibilities of claims flying in left, right, and centre, are mind-boggling.
Perhaps the state will rigorously oppose such legal actions, on the reasonable grounds that had they not taken action, covid would have ripped through our universities, and the death toll in society at large would have surely been much higher.
If they don’t, the floodgates for more claims could well and truly open.
App?
