Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)

That is fair enough. There are two things in relation to the alliance itself. The alliance is a major body, with close to 1 million members from the statistics given by the witnesses earlier. It seems to me that there is scope for the alliance to do certain things as well. One would be something along the lines of communication regarding the IRB and the need to try to avoid the courts, where possible. It should certainly be stressed that the outcome from the courts is generally no greater and can be more costly. Obviously, many of the members of the witnesses' organisation are the same people are taking court cases, so I think there is scope there.

My second point is in relation to the power that the alliance has by the number of members it has. Has something along the lines of one big switch ever been considered? In such a scenario, the members would get together and threaten the insurance companies that they will change providers if more appropriate premiums are not provided. It is probably taking it too far but an extension of that is that in certain industries there might be scope for the industry itself to set up a reassuring body.

I am thinking of Senator Nelson Murray who talked about the creation of PALI after businesses got together and they now pay €1 million a year in premiums. I think there is more scope to do things like that. It is not the answer but could be part of the answer coming from the actual consumer side.

I am concerned about the 20% who can only get one quote. I know that finding was as a result of the witnesses' survey. Do the witnesses have any insights into formal statistics that have been drawn up in that space or what direction that is going in? If it is 20%, was it 10% or 40%? Is the situation improving or disimproving?

The witnesses talked about personal injury guidelines and saw a role for this committee in signing off on the recommendations. It would be interesting, now that they are here, to get them to expand on that a little bit.