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SLIPS, TRIPS AND falls have cost Dublin City Council over €18 million in personal injury payouts in just three years.
The staggering amount was paid out between 2023 and September 2025 for 950 separate claims, figures obtained by The Journal reveal.
In 2024 alone, the city’s council settled over €7.6 million in compensation claims for injuries caused by its footpaths – up from €6 million in 2023.
And in the first nine months of 2025, the council paid out €4.3 million to 225 people who had a fall in the city.
The huge spend has been described as a “disaster” by one public representative, who said the scale of injuries linked to footpath conditions in Dublin was being ignored.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn, who sits on Dublin City Council, said the cost of repeatedly compensating injured pedestrians was eclipsing what it would take to properly address the problem.
“To do a proper programme to actually fix the footpaths in Dublin would probably cost you the guts of maybe €50 to €100 million,” Flynn told The Journal. “But in the meantime, people are having serious accidents – it’s a bit of a disaster.”
Figures obtained by The Journal under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) show that Dublin City Council has paid out more in public liability compensation than any other local authority in the country.
In total, it has settled almost €52 million in public liability claims since 2023, which includes just over €18 million on footpath injuries.
Flynn said he was regularly contacted by people who had suffered severe injuries after falling on city footpaths, adding that many of the locations where accidents occur are never properly repaired.
“What was a hand-built city, that wasn’t bombed during the war, has been undermined entirely by dilapidation and by an indifference,” he said.
“Yet, on the other hand, the NTA [National Transport Authority] with Dublin City Council are spending lots of money on active travel.
In the meantime, back at the ranch, your grandmother or grandfather or child is having an enormous crack off the ground with serious injuries.
“I know a woman recently who was walking along a footpath and there was fake grass, and she basically smashed her head, broke two ribs and punctured her lung.”
Green Party councillor Donna Cooney said the money being paid out in compensation would be better spent on prevention.
“It would be far better to spend the money on fixing the pavements,” she told The Journal.
“If people have accidents – especially older people – a fall can be fatal, either immediately or due to complications afterwards.”
The Journal contacted Dublin City Council about its spend on footpath-related injuries. However, at the time of publication, no one had responded to our requests for comment.
While Dublin City Council’s footpath-related injury bill alone runs into the tens of millions of euro, figures obtained from other local authorities via FOI show much lower compensation costs in total, even when all categories of claims are included.
Cork County Council had the second-highest public liability payout figure of all 28 councils which responded to our FOI requests. However, that figure is still three times lower than that of Dublin City Council.
According to documents, Cork County Council paid out €18.6 million in compensation to members of the public across the three years.
This was largely due to a dramatic spike in 2024, when payouts surged to €13.7 million.
The council said that increase was driven by two large settlements, with one claim leading to a €9 million payout. Another large compensation payout amounted to almost €3 million.
Despite repeated requests over a three-week period, Cork County Council did not respond to queries seeking clarification on what the multimillion-euro payments were made for.
Independent Ireland TD and party leader Michael Collins, who represents Cork South-West, said the council’s refusal to provide details about such large payouts was concerning.
“Open transparency is the way forward,” Collins said. “When there’s a situation where €12 million is paid out – and it might be for a legitimate reason – the council should be giving as much information as could be given, rather than shutting down the door.
“That leaves an air of suspicion that mightn’t need to be there,” he added.
Elsewhere, South Dublin County Council paid just over €8 million in public liability compensation, settling hundreds of claims but without any single-year spike.
Limerick City and County Council paid just over €10 million across the same period, with the volume of claims rising year-on-year.
Galway County Council saw one of the sharpest increases in 2025. It has paid out €4.3 million in compensation to members of the public. This is up from €879,000 in 2024.
In Donegal, compensation costs remained consistently high by rural standards, with more than €5 million paid out over three years, driven largely by public liability claims.
Clare County Council saw payouts rise steadily from €1.08 million in 2023 to €1.39 million by the third quarter of 2025, while Meath County Council has already exceeded previous full-year totals in the first nine months of 2025.
From January to September, Meath settled €610,907 in public liability claims, up from €533,545 in 2023, and €602,107 in 2024. FOI documents show that in total, footpath slip and trip claims accounted for €214,000 of the €1.75 million it paid out between 2023 and September 2025.
Kilkenny County Council paid just over €4.6 million over three years, and footpath-related claims accounted for more than €2 million of that total.
At the lower end of the scale, Laois and Leitrim County Councils each paid well under €700,000 in compensation across the three-year period.
Offaly, Cork City and Kerry councils were unable to provide any details of its compensation spend over the last three years.
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Patricia Devlin is an investigative reporter with The Journal Investigates.
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