Ms Dorothea Dowling:

The Minister can give the Injuries Board additional functions under section 54 of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003, which sets out the functions of the board. That section of the Act provides that the board has a data-collecting function and a cost-benefit analysis duty. In my view, additional functions can be provided for under that Act without any need to amend legislation.

With regard to transparency, the MIAB made recommendations in 2002 about providing a breakdown of the motor sector. I will not go into the detail. This would have provided more transparency to those of us involved in public policy and to external parties that might have been thinking of looking at the market. The Central Bank published such a breakdown from 2002 until 2009, but it stopped publishing it in 2009. When I challenged it to ascertain why it had stopped publishing this information, it emerged - reading between the lines - that the insurance industry had told the Central Bank it was too much hassle and it did not want to do it anymore. In its 2005 report on the insurance industry, the Competition Authority said not only that what the MIAB had recommended should be done, but also that it should be done in respect of public liability and employers' liability as well. That is relevant to the motor sector because they all involve injury. We can see the injury trend here. Rather than taking the advice of the MIAB, the Central Bank did a consultation process, largely with the industry. Anybody could have been involved in the consultation process, but I am sure those who were most interested in it were involved in the industry. As a result, the MIAB recommendation died a death. It never became a reality.