Mr. Gary Dunne:

One of the key points in our presentation was that the Society of Actuaries does not have access to the data so it is quite difficult to make the comparison. The Deputy is probably referring to the private motor insurance statistics that the Central Bank has published. That is where it uses the term surplus per policy.

One of our reasons for saying that we feel that we would be very happy to support the design of a study is because, as the committee will notice, the surplus per policy changes over time as claims are paid. If we go out to the ultimate point of the claims being paid over ten years, the surplus in year 1 will be a certain number that will drop and drop and will potentially become negative. In the most recent years, we expect it to become negative. As Mr. Mulligan said, from a technical perspective, we call it the combined ratio. When it is above 100%, one is underwriting losses and when it is below 100%, it is underwriting profits. That would allow for the expectation of how the claims would develop over time.