Mr. Kevin Thompson:

The Senator asks a fair question. First, I acknowledge that consumers have incurred serious premium increases. We hear it every day and we sympathise with them.

I will try and draw some correlation because I take the Senator's point that there are a lot of statistics there. The easiest statistic to look at is the gross incurred claims. According to the blue book, there was a 44% increase in the gross incurred claims from 2012 to 2015. That will show the Senator the level of claims occurrence that we have had within the market place over that period of time. Equally, when one tries to narrow it down, from example, to employer liability, we had net incurred claims in 2016 of €408 million, up 39% on the previous year. Unfortunately, we have seen jumps in the cost of claims and that is borne out by those high-level figures. In the figures we have quoted, we have tried to give a bit of insight on where claims are settled.

There has been an upward trajectory in terms of the cost of claims and that is very much one part of the story. That is why we as a sector are heavily committed to the ongoing work on the two Government reports on the cost of insurance working group for motor insurance and the most recent one on employer liability and public liability.

What will also help to bring some transparency to it is that one of the recommendations of the cost of insurance working group is to set up the national claims information database, which will be under the remit of the Central Bank. That database will capture the details of all claims and their associated costs. We are fully supportive of that and we want that to be implemented as quickly as possible. That will, in time, allow the Senator and other policy makers have real time information to allow them formulate policy which can alleviate this situation.