Ms Moyagh Murdock:

Fraud is an important issue for the industry. I am not familiar with the figure of 20% quoted by the Deputy. I wish to convey to the committee that we signed up to a new memorandum of understanding with An Garda Síochána and the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau in September. It is a much more streamlined and clear agreement where we all know what we need to report to An Garda Síochána, which can either follow it up centrally or divert it to the local office depending on the category of insurance fraud it falls into. This is the first thing we must point out is that it is all criminal. Probably one of the challenges we face is the threshold we must meet with evidence. Something we can see is clearly fraudulent does not always meet that threshold with An Garda Síochána in terms of its ability to investigate it. We can see cases in very recent days that would clearly be fraudulent but we must come up with the evidence to say they can be investigated. That said, in the first three months of that new memorandum of understanding, the feedback has been very positive from An Garda Síochána, which intends producing a report on what it is delivering, the quality of information coming through from the insurers is good and An Garda Síochána will be reporting to the Department of Justice in the first quarter of 2022. It is very important that we have the right guidelines and evidence that we can pursue fraud. There are certainly attempts at fraud in terms of application fraud and not providing the insurer with the correct information at the outset. The new legislation makes it important that insurers ask the right questions. The onus is now on the insurers to ask those questions and we have bought into that fully.

One of the things I would point out regarding the numbers quoted by the Deputy is that many of those cases have multiple applicants within one case. A Ford Zafira with seven seats could involve seven individuals in the same case. These all have legs and there are a lot of other parties involved in individual claims.