Mr. David Fitzgerald:

It all starts with an agreement between MIBI and the Minister for Transport. That sets out our raison d'être, which is to compensate the victims of uninsured or untraced hit-and-run accidents. We do other things for the State around cross-Border and motor insolvency issues, but we will focus here on uninsured driving. It starts from the agreement. We have a small, lean headquarters and there are 20 people employed in the bureau. We outsource some of our claims, once there are issues of liability, to claims-handling experts. We have a legal panel of specialists in the relevant area of law. We investigate every claim, because the nature of uninsured claims is that they warrant investigation. We have various specialists in the bureau that manage the quality of the claims handling to make sure they are handled efficiently and as we would expect, that the process is fair and we are paying the right amount of compensation - not too much and not too little. We put a lot of focus on that. We are fully funded by the motor insurance industry. It is a legal requirement under the Road Traffic Act for any motor insurers writing business in Ireland, regardless of whether they are supervised here or in another EU country, to join MIBI. They fund our claims in proportion to the market share. For example, if they have a 10% market share, they contribute 10% to the cost of the compensation we deliver. That goes up and down each year as companies shrink and grow. It always remains in proportion to their market share. The vast majority of the funding we receive is channelled to the victims. We are proud of how we do that and we feel we run it in a very efficient way.

The Deputy touched on the legal process. We try to support the Personal Injuries Resolution Board, PIRB, as it is referred to now. That would be our compensation mechanism of choice if we can choose one at all, because there are great savings on legal costs there. We are very keen to support that. We support the work it has done recently on its new personal injury guidelines, and we are sticking by those awards. If a claimant is not happy with an award, he or she is entitled to reject it and to pursue legal proceedings. That is very much a feature of our claims in the same way it would be in the insurance industry. Where we can, we are very keen to support the PIRB and we are excited about the new mediation process that it plans to introduce later in the year. We are very keen to lean into that and I engage with the CEO regularly.