Mr. Kevin Thompson:

I will address the question on insurance costs and premiums, because it is a competitive issue and ultimately feeds into the debate we are having on Brexit. The Senator highlighted that we take in €51 billion in premiums and only pay out €13 billion in claims. We need to clarify that. As per the early part of my opening statement, our 140 member companies includes both domestic insurers servicing the local domestic economy and insurers based here in Ireland not taking premium from the Irish economy, but inward premium from foreign jurisdictions. They have no interaction within this jurisdiction. If one looks at the general insurers who operate in this market, across motor insurance and public and employer liability insurance, the industry has suffered a loss of €875 million over a four year period, and that has been validated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Unfortunately, premiums have increased, but the mechanisms which the Department of Finance, through the cost of insurance working group, have implemented have lead to 33 recommendations being brought forward, involving 71 action points, which we as an industry have actively engaged in. The two real recommendations which carry the most severe rating is the work that will come out of the personal injuries commission, under Mr. Justice Nicholas Kearns. They will be looking to have a standardisation of grading of injuries and at benchmarking our level of awards against other jurisdictions. Equally, we are looking at enhancing the powers of the Injuries Board so that we can take ancillary costs out of non-contentious cases so that we can get claims through and get them paid more effectively on a daily basis. Ultimately premiums come back to the cost of claims, and until we actually see the outputs of these recommendations coming though we are at a new norm. We are acutely aware of it, and aware of the distress that it has posed to our consumers, but as an industry we are actively engaged in coming forward with solutions to address the cost of claims.

On the final question on promotion, we would like to recognise that we work with IDA Ireland, Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach on a daily basis and do a sterling job in trying to promote this jurisdiction as a jurisdiction of choice for financial services. Other countries do the same, but within the promotional ecosystem that they have, regulators would be involved. That is the case with Luxembourg.