State Claims Agency paying investigators €200,000 a year to check on suspicious personal injury claims

State agency is clamping down on personal injury claims made against it with licenced detectives who must sign ‘surveillance protocol agreement’

The use of private investigators is standard practice for insurance companies, but this is the first time that the SCA’s use of them in personal injury cases has come to light. Picture: Getty

The State Claims Agency is paying private investigators around €200,000 per year to help defend personal injury compensation claims against the state.

The firms it has hired include those who specialise in obtaining videos and photos of claimants to show that their compensation claims are false or exaggerated.

Another of the firms used by the State Claims Agency (SCA) declares that it can identify “insurance fraudsters at distances of over two kilometres” using specialised photographic ...