Ms Dorothea Dowling:

An EU regulation exempts insurance specifically from anything to do with collecting data. Such an exemption is normally considered to be contrary to competition. It is because of the nature of insurance that there is a specific EU regulation that provides for an exemption in the instance of insurance. It is important that there is symmetry of information. I should also say, in response to the reference that was made to Zenith, that the company which approached me when it was trying to break into the Irish market, but was concerned because it could not get access to Insurance Ireland's three data-sharing databases without becoming a member of that body, which was something it did not want to do, was not Zenith. After I said to the company in question that they were not going to listen to me, I brought the matter to the attention of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, which said that it could not prosecute because its function is not to create competition, but to prosecute if it has evidence to facilitate that.