Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 28:

In page 7, between lines 22 and 23, to insert the following: “Provision of information relevant to contract of insurance and interpretation of certain terms

8. (1) Within a reasonable time after concluding a contract of insurance, the insurer shall, where such is relevant to the particular contract, provide the consumer on paper or another durable medium with the completed application or proposal form.

(2) Where there is an ambiguity or doubt about the meaning of a term in any document referred to in subsection (1), the rule of law applicable to contracts of insurance, namely that the interpretation most favourable to the consumer, or beneficiary, as appropriate, shall prevail, applies.”.

This is the section the Government has made most change to avoid having superfluous and overlapping provisions with EU law. The Central Bank and the Department of Finance have reviewed the section and have found that most of these requirements are provided for under a mix of different regulations, including: the European Communities (Distance Marketing of Consumer Financial Services) Regulations, European Union (Insurance Distribution) Regulations 2018, European Union (Insurance and Reinsurance) Regulations 2015 and European Communities (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts) Regulations 1995.

In advance of this meeting, my officials circulated a background note on this provision. It highlighted in particular that the insurance distribution directive, IDD, has been introduced since the Law Reform Commission, LRC, reported. It has extensive requirements in Part 7 on "Information Requirements and Conduct of Business Rules". For instance, an insurance product information document is required to be prepared in which it is necessary to set out a lot of information about the insurance product being sold. While they do not fully match section 8, the IDD regulations offer very strong and clear protection to policyholders.

While it is acknowledged that we could have instead tried to repeal the relevant provisions in these other regulations and thus consolidate them in the Bill, this could have proved to be a complex task and we would run the risk of finding ourselves not in full compliance with EU law. In addition, it could make any future amending transpositions of IDD very complicated as they would almost certainly have to be done through primary legislation rather than secondary legislation.

It is proposed instead that the requirements that have been identified as not being covered by existing legislation should be included in a significantly revised section 8. These provisions are: the insurer after concluding a contract of insurance should provide the consumer with the completed application or proposal form and when there is uncertainty over any term in a document, the rule of law and interpretation most beneficial to a consumer should prevail.