The Injuries Resolution Board's figures: the median, the average, the acceptance rate and what they mean

The Injuries Resolution Board publishes its figures once a year, and the press reports them under headlines about averages. This guide takes the Board's 2025 figures apart: what each one measures, how a median differs from an average, what the acceptance rate says about what people do, and why none of it is a figure for any particular claim. Every figure is the Board's own or the Central Bank's, dated, and all of them are kept on the figures page.

The 2025 figures

The Board published its Annual Report 2025 and its Award Values Report for July to December 2025 on 8 July 2026. The press release gives these figures:

Two further figures come from press reports of the Annual Report rather than the release itself. The Law Society Gazette and the Irish Times reported the average award as €20,559 and the highest award as €908,000 in a road traffic case. The register marks them as press figures.

For July to December 2025, the Board's Award Values Report gives a median of €12,850 in motor claims, up from €12,510, and €14,118 in public liability claims, up from €13,858, and says the median in employer liability claims rose 27%.

Median against average

The median is the middle award: half of the Board's 2025 awards were below €14,020 and half above. The average is the total divided by the number of awards: €213 million over 10,032 awards gives a figure of about €21,000, and the press reported it as €20,559.

The average is higher than the median because a small number of very large awards pull it up. One award over €900,000 moves an average; it does not move a median at all. That is why the Board leads with the median and why this site does. When a search result says the average award is twenty thousand, it is reporting a figure that most claimants were below.

The median also hides a range. 74% of awards were for minor injuries, and 9% were over €50,000. A minor neck injury with a substantial recovery within six months has a Guidelines' bracket of €500 to €3,000; the most catastrophic injuries sit at in or about €550,000 for general damages alone. The median sits between those because the Board's caseload does, not because it describes any injury.

With and without special damages

The Board's median was €14,020 including special damages and €12,000 without them. Special damages are the vouched financial losses: earnings, treatment, travel, care. The difference, about €2,000 at the median, shows how much of a typical award is general damages for the injury and how much is money out of pocket. The special damages guide explains what is vouched and how.

The categories

The Board reports medians by liability category because the caseloads differ. Motor claims are the largest group and had the lowest median, €12,850 in the second half of 2025. Public liability claims, falls in shops and on footpaths among them, had a median of €14,118. Employer liability claims are fewer and the Board reported that about 1,200 were assessed in the period, with the median up 27%.

The categories describe who the respondent was, not what the injury was. A whiplash claim against a driver and a whiplash claim against an employer after a works van collision are valued under the same Guidelines' bracket. The category medians differ because the injuries in each caseload differ, and because an employer liability claim more often carries a larger loss of earnings.

Consent and acceptance: what half of people do

Two figures describe what the parties did rather than what the Board decided.

69% of respondents consented to assessment in 2025. The rest declined, and the claim went to court by way of an Authorisation without any figure from the Board. The respondent guide covers the 90 days and the four options.

47% of assessments were accepted in 2025, after 50% in 2024 and 48% in 2023. An assessment binds only where both sides accept it, so in roughly half of cases where the Board produced a figure, one side or the other did not accept it and the claim went on to an Authorisation. Section 30 of the 2003 Act gives the claimant 28 days to accept in writing; silence is rejection. Section 51A then matters: where the claimant rejects an assessment the respondent accepted and a court awards no more, no order for costs can be made in the claimant's favour. The accept or reject guide explains the rule.

The acceptance rate is often read as a verdict on the Board's figures. It is not quite that. It counts rejections by respondents as well as claimants, and a rejection may be about liability, which the Board does not decide, rather than the amount. What it does show is that the Board's figure is often the beginning of a negotiation rather than the end.

The highest award

The Board's release says its highest award in 2025 exceeded €900,000; the press reported €908,000 in a road traffic case. The Board has no upper limit on what it can assess. The Guidelines' cap of in or about €550,000 applies to general damages, and an award above it is made up of special damages, usually future loss of earnings and the cost of care over a lifetime. The highest award is reported here because the Board itself reports it; the site publishes no individual award beyond that.

The Central Bank's figures

The Central Bank's National Claims Information Database reports motor injury claims by the channel they settled through. For the first half of 2025, as the Irish Examiner reported the figures, a motor injury claim settled directly with the insurer cost €14,233 on average; through the Board, €22,658; through litigation, €66,100, of which €26,752 was legal costs, taking 4.7 years. In 2024, 16% of motor injury claims settled through the Board in an average of 2.7 years and 36% through litigation in an average of 5 years.

Those figures compare channels, and the claims in each channel are not the same claims: the ones that reach court tend to be the larger or the contested ones. The Central Bank figures guide reads them in detail, and the direct settlement guide covers what a direct offer means.

The trend

The Board's release gives the 2020 median, €18,459, as the comparator for the Guidelines: the 2025 median of €14,020 is 24% below it. 2020 was the last full year under the Book of Quantum. The Book of Quantum guide explains why older figures still appear in searches and what the approved but not in force 16.7% increase would do.

Applications have fallen too: 20,077 in 2025, down 35% on 2019. The Board claims over €88 million in savings from its process against litigation.

Why none of it is a figure for your claim

A median is the middle of ten thousand cases. An average is their total spread evenly. An acceptance rate is a count of what other people decided. None of them describes an injury, a recovery period or a prognosis, and those are what the Guidelines value. The Board assesses each claim on its own medical evidence, with regard to the Guidelines' bracket for an injury described like that, and adds the vouched special damages. The figures here tell you the shape of the Board's caseload and nothing about where any one claim sits in it.

Where this leaves you

The Board's figures are useful for one thing: knowing what the Board's process produces across the run of claims, so that an assessment, when it comes, can be read against something. The Guidelines' bracket for an injury described like yours is in the injury checker. Every figure in this guide, with the year, the source and whether it came from the Board's release or a press report, is on the figures page, and the register is updated when the Board publishes.