Mr. Simon Barry:

Our work in insurance spans a long period. We have done studies spanning the past 20 years and it is an area we remain very active in because we are acutely aware of how important it is not just to the committee, but to the businesses and consumers we all serve.

Most recently, in our submission for the insurance reform action plan, we targeted a number of areas because we believe in their value in better outcomes for businesses and consumers, including the area of information, transparency and provision, where we welcomed not just the introduction in 2019 of a new database covering the insurance sector but also its expansion. We may have briefly touched on this earlier; we also think there is merit in and advantages for the further development of that database to be considered to provide even more detail on exactly how the insurance sector operates in different markets in Ireland. The reason that is important is that providing a degree of transparency about how the market works is an important way of attracting new entrants and highlighting where there may be gaps in provision or particular opportunities other providers may wish to seize.

Another area we regard as an important structural change is the way claims are settled, as claims are an important driver of insurance costs. We welcome the expanded remit the Injuries Resolution Board now has. What is really impactful is where we see the concrete examples of how much quicker and cheaper it is for claims to be settled through that mechanism. We believe that as the system makes more use of the board as a way of settling disputes, it will play an important role in getting better outcomes. As much as we welcome all the progress that has been made, we acknowledge - Mr. McHugh touched on this earlier - that in some cases, elements of the major changes that are unfolding will take time. I will give one example that goes back to the Senator's earlier question. In our major study of the public liability market, which we completed in 2020, one of the recommendations we made related to the expansion of the board's role to include a mediation service. That has now been implemented as of the end of 2024. That is relatively recent, but we are encouraged to see metrics, for example, that approximately 50% of cases that go into the mediation service offered by the board are accepted. Where that happens, the settlement time is three months, compared with litigation, which can take on average 5.8 or six years. It is not that where we are is in some way attractive from the perspective of people seeking to get insurance, but we take some degree of encouragement from the journey the system has been on and in the way our recommendations have been followed through on in a number of important areas.