Dr. Neil Walker:

We spent a great deal of time - this is detailed in the report - trying to reconcile the numbers the Central Bank published its recent bodily injury thematic review with the numbers published by the Injuries Board and we cannot reconcile them. One would expect the Central Bank estimates on something as simple as the average size of a claim to be bigger because it is forward looking and includes provisions for legal costs but it is the other way around as far as we can tell. The famous headline regarding a 27% increase in premiums was based on a much smaller number than that of the Injuries Board and we cannot fathom this. Until we have hard data, we could have one regulator telling the insurers to charge more because they do not charge enough while another states they are acting as a cartel and need to charge less. A battle of regulators would not be terribly helpful. We can agree on facts but there is a big shortage of them at present.