Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The directive imposes a strict three-month timeframe within which the compensation body must make an offer of compensation or reasoned reply to the claimant. In order to work within these strict timeframes, any audit that is carried out on an ex-ante basis needs to balance the interests of carrying out a comprehensive audit of as many claims as possible with the operational constraints of working within this tight enough timeframe.

I will give the full context around the relevant amount, if that is okay with the Deputy. Officials in the Department have engaged extensively with the relevant stakeholders, including the Central Bank, the State Claims Agency and MIBI, to determine an appropriate threshold in this context. Currently, it is anticipated that €250,000 would represent an appropriate threshold amount. That is based on information from the national claims information database, NCID, which indicates that approximately 1% of number and approximately 20% of value of claims would be reviewed by the State Claims Agency on an ex-ante basis, based on the NCID data. On the basis of data relating to stakeholders' previous experience of claims payments in the context of previous motor insurance insolvencies, the State Claims Agency has advised that a threshold of €250,000 would amount to 0.8% of complaints, or one in 125, which is consistent with such NCID data. The governance and oversight framework under the Bill, therefore, as we have mentioned, needs to be balanced to ensure that claims can be processed in accordance with that strict three-month timeline to which I alluded a few moments ago under the motor insurance directive, MID, in particular. That would create a challenge in terms of capacity and timing but we have explored the situation extensively with stakeholders to ensure this works as efficiently as possible.