Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have spoken to the Minister of State about the insurance industry on a number of occasions. I wish him well in his role and I know that he is committed to it. More than 25 years ago, a gentleman walked into my premises and fell and broke his hip. He was an English gentleman and claimed through the English system, to the relief of the Irish insurance company, because the claim was capped. That was 25 years ago and we have much to catch up on with regard to claims. A key issue in Ireland is that one does not know what the payout will be.

I welcome the whole-of-government approach to the insurance industry. I know it spreads across a number of Departments and is quite complex. Equally, I hope that the Government will look at individual sections, because much can be done that does not necessarily require other Departments to be involved. Most people have spoken about high-level matters. I want to focus on the clients, the role of clients and their interaction with insurance companies. Having run my own business for more than 30 years, I have had numerous engagements with insurance companies, some of which have been positive, while others have been negative. As the Minister of State mentioned, transparency about what one is entitled to know as a client and the information one is given has been an issue. I went to court on one occasion to give my evidence and the claim was settled while we were at lunch. I am still waiting to find out what exactly was settled and how exactly the settlement was reached.

Companies are being held to ransom more and more because there is not competition in the insurance industry. We are getting more fearful about what we can or cannot do. Another example of a practical experience is a claim a number of years ago, which we were not aware of until it arrived in the post from a solicitor. We rang the insurance company to say there was a potential claim. The insurance company said it was not notified of that claim when it occurred and I said that I was not notified of it either. The company said that I must notify it if there was a potential claim. Now when one is looking at renewing insurance, one looks at the number of potential claims that are on one's books that may never turn into a claim, yet one is penalised because of them. One then has a number of actual claims on one's books. Some might be genuine while many are fraudulent. They can hang in a system for six to eight years before they are settled. During that process, one has to pay a premium because the claim sits on one's books, unresolved. I would like to see much more focus on transparency and reform.

I feel that as a client, I am not treated fairly or getting enough information to allow me to understand why the premiums that I am presented with are coming. Having had a 15 year clear record, my insurance jumped by 300% in two years, and almost made the company unviable. Even my own brother, who is a chartered accountant, looked at the option of providing our own insurance, because we could not pay the premium we were being asked for. That happened because we had three claims after 15 years without any. The three claims, which are now four years old, still have not progressed anywhere and no settlement has been made on any of them, but we pay a premium on that year after year. There is no clawback on that. The insurance company will not say that because the claim was never settled and nothing was paid out on it, one will get the premiums paid for the last four years back. I would like to see more work on transparency and what we are entitled to as clients with regard to the operation of the insurance industry.

Under GDPR, we are not allowed to hold our video evidence for longer than a month. It is a simple, practical thing. One thing that worked in our favour was that when we were told of a potential claim, we had CCTV on file. Unless that claim comes within a month, that CCTV information has to be wiped. If somebody makes a claim in six months, I have no evidence. I have nothing to back me up, as a client, to try to mitigate that claim. I find it frustrating that when I hold my hands up and say that a genuine accident took place and think I was liable, the person on the other side will be put through the same process even though we are holding our hands up. The fraudulent ones drag things out and every year that they drag it out is another year with excess on my premium. The Minister of State mentioned the level of competition. There is no competition for the hospitality sector at the moment and one is held to ransom.