Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Rising Cost of Motor Insurance: Discussion (Resumed)

11:00 am

Mr. Gary Dunne:

I will deal with the latter question first. There would not be an industry unless there was a reasonable level of profit. There has to be a reasonable level of profit within an industry to ensure that there are competitors, because otherwise competitors will pull back. If the losses were sustained over 20 years, if we had lost several billion euro over 20 years, how many companies would want to stay in that market? It is not for us to decide the definition of the word "reasonable" in that instance but there does need to be a reasonable level of profit. One of the points we made in our presentation was that the rate increase does look very high and one reason for that is that the base was too low so in most recent years there was an unsustainable situation. As a result part of the reason for the rate increase was to support that.

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