Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her good wishes for Christmas. I utterly reject that I have misled anyone except those who chose to misinterpret what I said. The situation is very clear. In the programme for Government we said that we would deal with dual pricing. It is in the programme for Government and the national plan for insurance and we are following through on that. It is important that the committee get a quick pen picture on this. It is why we have a whole-of-government approach to dealing with insurance reform. It is not just the Department of Finance, because it is an industry regulated by the Central Bank, but also the Departments of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Justice and Public Expenditure and Reform. Much of what is happening in the action plan is not being done by the Department of Finance specifically. My job, as I see it, is to make sure that everybody else plays their part in the area. We can talk about a duty of care. It is nothing to do with the Department of Finance. It is part of the overall measures being taken.

We are doing exactly what we did with the judicial guidelines. The judges were dealing with their issue and we just imposed a timetable in the legislation along which they would have to produce a report which they did. That ensured that the job was done. We had a legislative insurance policy in place to ensure that the work that could be done was done according to a specified timeline. We are doing exactly the same here. We are giving a timeline for the production of a report. A report can only be produced if the Central Bank has taken these measures. A fair question would be around the Central Bank having had the powers to do this all along. It does not require any new powers. It is a valid question. The report highlights motor and house insurance policyholders who are suffering a loyalty penalty for being with a company beyond nine years. The question is why was this not dealt with long before now given that the powers to deal with it did exist? Our only role is to assert that yes, the powers are there and the Central Bank is going to do it and we will ensure that a report must be produced. It is about ensuring that the job will actually be done. That is the principal thing that we are doing. We are ensuring that all the agencies involved in the area step up and do what is in their powers. Sometimes they need new powers. We just want to ensure that it will done. The job will be done by the Central Bank using existing powers. The legislation ensures that there is a timeframe and a deadline to ensure that it is done.