I N JULY 2015 Maria Bailey, then a 39-year-old local councillor in Dun Laoghaire, ran a 10km race in under 54 minutes. Her creditable time, recorded on the race’s website, came back to haunt her in May, when it emerged that Ms Bailey—now an MP —was seeking up to €60,000 in compensation for a fall, three weeks before the race, which she claimed had left her unable to run for three months. Enjoying a convivial night out, Ms Bailey had suffered minor injuries when she fell off an “unsupervised” swing in a trendy Dublin hotel. She withdrew her claim soon after news of it broke.

For many people, the case was a particularly galling example of Ireland’s “compo culture”, an epidemic of dubious compensation claims, extravagant awards and soaring insurance premiums that is blighting small business, forcing drivers off the road and stifling public activities, including local festivals.

“Sports clubs and community groups aren’t able to offer the same services they used to,” says Peter Boland, director of the Alliance for Insurance Reform, a coalition of businesses, sporting bodies and NGO s. “We have a crisis of childhood obesity, but many primary schools don’t let children run in the playground any more, or play football informally, because they’re afraid of injury claims. It is shrinking society.”

Insurance companies complain that Irish courts pay out much more than their Western peers for short-term, soft-tissue injuries like whiplash. A recent inquiry found that the average soft-tissue payout in Ireland was just under €20,000, four times the average in Britain. Such large quantities of cash do seem to have curative value. Last month the Irish Times reported that 90% of whiplash patients attending one Dublin pain clinic stopped showing up as soon as compensation was paid.

Lawyers disagree. They blame Ireland’s insurance companies, which they accuse of exaggerating the problem to cover for premiums and profits that are increasing out of proportion to any rise in payouts. To reduce awards, argues Ken Murphy, director-general of the professional body for solicitors, would “merely be to take from the pockets of injured victims of negligence in order to line the pockets of an increasingly profitable insurance industry”.

This summer the government set up a judicial council that might, eventually, cap compensation for minor injuries. Little has yet been done, however, to remedy a dearth of investigations for insurance fraud. Earlier this year a parliamentary committee revealed that the insurance companies, while claiming that 20% of all claims are fraudulent, had only referred 19 cases to police in a recent six-month period.

Meanwhile, small businesses fear the worst. Gerry Frawley of the Irish Inflatable Hirers Federation frets that the last insurer willing to cover the bouncy-castle industry—a London-based underwriter—has just pulled out of Ireland. “The responsible people will go out of business in the next year,” he warns, “and the cowboys who never cared about safety or insurance or checks or registration will be renting play equipment to your children.” What some seek to gain on the swings, others will lose on the bouncy castles. ■