In a stinging attack on the judiciary and legal profession, Quinn described the connection between judges and lawyers as "an unholy alliance", and inferred that judges could award high settlements to insurance claimants in the civil courts in a bid to undermine the PIAB.

He called on insurance industry leaders to work with members of the Oireachtas to monitor court awards handed down in insurance claim cases.

Quinn, who was recently appointed as Labour's enterprise spokesman, was speaking at a meeting of the Oireachtas enterprise committee last week. During the meeting, members of the insurance sector expressed concern that a significant number of plaintiffs, who sought compensation under the PIAB, were rejecting lower awards and taking their claims to the civil courts. The PIAB was primarily designed to remove expensive legal costs from the civil courts process.

In what will be interpreted as bitter criticism of the legal profession and judiciary, Quinn told the committee:

"lawyers aspire to be judges and judges never forget that they were once poor lawyersf it becomes an unholy alliance".

He then asked the industry reps: "what can we do collectivelyf to ensure that the hallowed halls of the Four Courts do not accidentally or conspiratorially produce a set of benchmark judgements that will usher a stampede back to the courts and away from PIAB?"

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, Quinn warned that "we should be under no illusions about the legal lobby". He recalled that, in the 1980s, he was a minister in the Fine Gael-Labour government that attempted to reduce legal costs. "When we ended the system where two senior counsels were required, the senior counsels responded by doubling their fees, " he said.