Mr. Ken Murphy:

My background is in this area. For years I was a practitioner in Irish and European competition law. I spent a number of years in Brussels as well as in Dublin practising in this field. I was struck by the insightful remark from Dorothea Dowling on last night's television programme. She referred to the prediction, apparently coming from the insurance industry, of premium increases next year of in the region of 40%. Any competition lawyer or regulator would immediately recoil and recognise that this is what is known as signalling to the market. It should not happen. It should not be the case that the insurance industry is telling the market and, therefore, each of the other providers, what they intend to charge in premiums next year. This seems to be a dubious practice.

The overall pattern over many years seems to have been a vast amount of under-pricing and under-reserving and, as a result, driving competitors out of the market. As a consequence we have seen the removal of Quinn, Royal Sun Alliance, Setanta, and the most recent firm to leave, Enterprise Insurance. All of these firms have now left the market. Inevitably, the level of competition in the market has been greatly reduced and as a consequence we are seeing extraordinary increases in premiums. That in itself should be of interest to the competition regulator. There is a notorious absence of adequate competition in the motor insurance market in Ireland.

The answer overall, it seems to the Law Society of Ireland, is to bring in more competition. More competitors should come in from abroad. That will not happen, it seems, until there is a greater release of data, the cards that are being held close to the chest of the current insurers. The implicit question Senator Conway-Walsh asked was whether I have a concern about an absence of competition. I do and market behaviour is reflective of an absence of competition.