Mr. Gary Dunne:

We can answer the Deputy's question of why everyone has to pay more. The principle of insurance is that it is a big pool of money and everyone pays in and the people who have claims take out. To put it in context, on average around 10% of policies have a claim in any given year. Only 1% of policies have an injury claim so it is even a smaller number with which we are dealing that are actually the crux of the problem. It is actually quite a low number overall. The pot can be divided up into risk segments which I think is what the Deputy is referring to. One can say a particular person is more risky. To give an extreme example, a 17 year old on a provisional licence in a Ferrari will be much worse than a 50-year-old nun driving a Yaris. They are quite different risks. One risk will have a particular profile to it and a particular increase and another risk will have a different increase. Even if neither has had claims, everyone needs to pay more because we do not know who will have the claims. That is the principle of insurance, otherwise the whole system fails so everyone has to pay a bit more. I do not have enough experience, particularly from the society's perspective, to say exactly why there are some very high increases. What I can say and what I have heard on the radio is that when people shop around, they are able to bring that down to a level that is still high but not near the three-figure sum the Deputy referred to. It is a common sense thing to do to shop around to ensure one has the best price for what one is purchasing.