John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are caught for time again, so I will also put some questions before the Minister of State answers. To give an example, Irish Life issues a premium to one of its clients for life assurance of €1,049. This year, it went up by €360 per month, a colossal increase. There is no justification for it. The policy is for elderly people and so they are finding it really difficult to grapple with a huge company like that and get some form of justice. Charlie Weston's article in the Irish Independentwhich quotes from the Central Bank, is headlined "Elderly hit hardest". It is the elderly and vulnerable who find it most difficult to move around and change insurance companies to test the cost of premium against another company. They are really suffering badly. Out of respect for those who are marginalised or elderly, we should do something specific about their cases now to assist them in the context of the rip-off that is taking place and the fact that their vulnerability is what is playing against them. It is shocking in the extreme that a big insurance company that is profiteering, gouging and into price fixing, to a degree, will target the elderly in the way it does and make it impossible for them to exercise their right to change insurance companies. I ask the Minister of State to address that specifically or give me information on how a Member of the House can address it directly to the company because it is an outrage.

Second, for the last term in Government, I listened patiently here to the arguments around the insurance companies and what they were doing and the rather big talk about reform and very little action. The Tánaiste, in particular, in the foreword by him to this document, has a brass neck to make the comments he has made. One would be led to believe that he had just been elected to the Dáil and that he had no input on this in the previous Government when he did. This committee listened to many contributions giving us the impression that we are actually moving to a point where the insurance companies were going to be stopped in their tracks in how they treated their customers and that did not happen. Now we are embarking on a new Government, of which the Minister of State is part, and I will be looking for actions, not reports. In this foreword the Tánaiste says, "It is my firm intention to have updates on these timelines on a quarterly basis." He is making a mockery of what is going on here and he needs to be challenged on it in the Department of Finance because all we have had for the past four years has been this type of play on words and play on presentation to give the impression that actually we are doing something positive and people will feel a reduction in their premiums. I know from my premium and those of business that they have all gone up and not gone down. I would say the same, and the Minister of State is photographed beside him, to Paschal Donohoe.

The content of that foreword must disgust people because of what they know is happening in the insurance industry. I ask for clear action across the board to bring down the cost of insurance. Insurance Ireland made presentations here, as did others. The one thing that came across in every presentation that was made - there was one side against the other, the insurance companies on one side, and the customers on the other - was that the insurance companies and their umbrella organisation were simply not making the information available about what is happening in Ireland in terms of insurance. Therefore an outside player comes in blind rather than being fully informed. That, in short, is the problem. We will certainly have engagements with the Minister of State over the duration of the Government, but on reflection, our engagement with the previous Administration and Minister was hopeless. I would like to be able to say differently but that is not the case. The Minister of State says the subcommittee is dealing with this. How many times has it met?