Professor Peter Clinch:

I thank the Deputy for his question. The cost of insurance has been a major issue for the National Competitiveness Council for a number of years. In 2016 we were out of the blocks very early in saying there was a problem. We produced a bulletin entitled, Action Required to Address Insurance Cost Competitiveness, in which we highlighted all of the main issues that we saw. We made a series of recommendations in the report about assigning greater priority to improving insurance cost competitiveness and creating a comprehensive benchmark for insurance costs in order that we could see what was happening.

The Deputy had asked about the data. The bulletin argued that the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, should be properly empowered to collect the required claims data in order that we could properly assess what was happening. There was also mention of non-attendance for medicals. We spoke much about the reform of the legal profession and how it could contribute to the reduction in insurance costs. The cost of insurance working group was established afterwards. We have since mentioned in our challenge reports the implementation of recommendations in the first phase in respect of motor, employer's and public liability insurance. We have also made recommendations on some of the other reports that were produced at the same time.

In the case of motor insurance, Central Statistics Office, CSO, data suggest prices increased rapidly from 2015, peaking in quarter 3 of 2016. They demonstrate that they have since dropped. According to the most recent figures, the cost of motor insurance was 4% higher than in 2015. Taken together, that represents a 32% increase since 2013, which is dramatic. When compared with prices elsewhere in the European Union, prices in Ireland increased much faster from 2013 to their peak in 2016. Therefore, the rate of price increases has been much greater than in other areas.

I can speak about a series of other recommendations if the committee so desires, but there is a difficulty. It was not mentioned in our cost of doing business report because it was a statistical exercise and we use international data to compare costs here with those in our international competitors. We use the best available data, but the problem is there are many data limitations with respect to insurance costs. In the absence of official statistics we do not want to publish data that are not correct. We only have that overall motor insurance picture. We have set out a series of recommendations for how the data could be improved in order t hat we could make better judgments. The anecdotes suggest insurance costs are a big problem. We have certainly demonstrated that the cost of motor insurance has been a big problem which has only just started to top out.