Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his presentation. People want the cost of their insurance to come down. They feel they are being exploited by insurance companies and our job is to find out why. Transparency is the key word because people remember when they were told that the fundamentals of the economy were sound and the banks were stable and they have the same concerns now about the insurance industry. We have to get to the crux of the stability of the insurance market in Ireland and of those companies operating in that market which are based abroad. We have seen the impact on people of two big companies going to the wall.

It worries me when the Minister of State says that we cannot direct insurance companies on the pricing of insurance. While that may be true, it may indicate that there will be some hand washing. There needs to be regulation. Will the Minister of State direct us on the legislation that needs to be put in place in order to reassure us about the insurance industry? People do not buy the suggestion that the number of accidents has increased and that there is an extra cost on the insurance companies. There is a worry that bad investments have been made by insurance companies and people on the ground are paying the price. They want to be reassured about the companies' stability. We need to be able to compare final figures before the report is published. Can interim reports be provided to help this committee do its work effectively? Different people will appear before us who have concerns about the insurance industry and we need to be able to get to the crux of the matter so if figures could be released before the final report, that would be useful.

I am not filled with confidence about the compartmentalisation of the legal costs. That was one of the stipulations of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, to tackle high legal costs. Nothing has been done about that. It will be interesting to see figures with integrity being isolated to give us information on that.

I come from a rural constituency and public transport is not an option. People are unable to access the employment market because they have no chance of getting employment in their own area and must travel to find it. Whatever we do needs to be rural-proofed as well in terms of how the extortionate costs of insurance impact on rural communities. Every week, returning emigrants tell us that one of the biggest barriers to them returning is the cost of insurance and the fact their no-claims bonuses from other countries are not recognised. I thank the Minister of State for his report but we really need to get to the crux of this, which is transparency and the insurance industry owning up to exactly what is happening within the industry.