Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to give Ms Murphy platitudes. I think we all appreciate the attendant costs that are being loaded on to the sector. Our purpose here is to try to drill down. My understanding is that there is a single European market for insurance. I want to get to the nub of the interaction between the witnesses and the working group. It appears that there has been no engagement so this committee could recommend that the people who have made presentations here today in respect of very specific points could carry forward and interact with the working group because this is vital.

In respect of the guidelines on injuries, I know we will use the big toe and little toe analogy. The Injuries Board is basically telling us that the average payout on claims between 2009 and 2015 was approximately €22,000 or €23,000. Mr. Redmond and Mr. McDonnell have touched on this issue. We have to find a solution somewhere. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision where there is the right to legal representation, and one takes that for what it is, it seems that if it has dealt with 100,000 awards since 2005 and the average payout is approximately €22,000 or €23,000, it appears that there is a multiple of that, which is not quantifiable at this point in time, where claims are paid out on the steps of the court. This is where the data and lack of transparency come in. This is where we will be engaging with the Law Society of Ireland in interrogating that dynamic as well as engaging with Insurance Ireland.

The issue of cartel-like behaviour does come into play. If Insurance Ireland has a finite membership composed of the bigger houses and if Zenith Insurance, which is exiting the market, is saying that it does not have access to data, it is clear that there is a blocking mechanism there by certain elements of the insurance sector to ensure there is incomplete access to information by either the Irish Brokers Association or some of the insurance players in the market. If we can tackle that element, we can introduce data sharing among insurance providers.

If data sharing was introduced it would sort out the taxi drivers that Mr. Herron is representing. To have a situation where there are only three insurance companies providing insurance for the Taxi Drivers' Federation seems to me to be a ludicrous scenario given the importance of taxis to how we operate. I want to get a sense of the witnesses' perspective on or perceptions of how Insurance Ireland and its members operate and whether they perceive there to be a blocking mechanism in relation to data. To return to the PIAB, if we could have transparency around the data from claims settled out of court, it would sort many of the people who are renting cars in this country. It would sort many of the problems for the providers in that sector.

I want to make one small point on the staging of accidents before I let the witnesses back in. Mr. Redmond touched on the issue of soft tissue injuries. He stated he had no confidence in the review unless it benchmarks against European Union norms. If we had a situation here, for instance, whereby small claims for minor injuries such as whiplash were dealt with by things like vouchers for access to medical services, it could then be monitored on an ongoing basis. Is that something that the witnesses' members would accept?