Mr. Peter Boland:

We have looked at this in quite a bit of detail. The CSO contacts insurers, who give quotes related to the type of policies the CSO wants to measure. It is not an ideal approach to putting together data in an area like insurance, which is so fraught with difficulties. The figures are better that they are for liability, where there are no data at all, but in the area of motor insurance the data being generated are for a specific type of premium. People, including those to whom the Senator has spoken, may not be in the category picked by the CSO.

Our experience is that younger drivers, drivers of older cars, and drivers of commercial vehicles are still getting hammered and are not experiencing reductions. A very specific area, which I suspect is comprised of standard families based somewhere outside Dublin, may find their premiums reducing at the moment but we do not think that is widespread.

One must take the good with the bad. Everyone was quite willing to use the 70% increase as a prompt for action in recent years. That was entirely valid at the time. While there is some validity in the figures and in the response to them, we are not at all convinced that the model being used cover all areas.