Mr. Eoin McCambridge:

Regarding claims management, we spoke about that with the Minister. In terms of claims management, the issue is that it is the Law Society which has responsibility. In fairness, it attempts to block these sites but if it takes down one site and it is blocked, another site pops up. Were one to google it any time of the day, a number of sites would come up. There is no effective legislation in place to punish these sites. They keep reappearing, and we need legislation to deal with that.

The Senator mentioned people taking fraudulent cases but there is another issue. I have friends who have been injured but do not take cases. They do not want to be seen to be taking cases because people will assume they are fraudulent. It has got that bad.

Another issue is that, as businesses and policyholders, we see the judgments. I have got almost an unhealthy interest now in looking at the newspaper headlines every Thursday and Friday to see what has happened in court cases. As a lay person reading through the judgments, one tries to work out how the judges arrived at their conclusions and sometimes it is very difficult to do that. They may well have perfectly valid reasons and we believe if we could see those we would understand better the reason premiums are increasing or what we can do to prevent these issues but as a lay person reading the newspaper, I am not getting a clear picture as to the reason vast amounts of money are being awarded in these cases. There is no downside to taking a case at present. If it is thrown out, it is thrown out but nothing happens following it so unless we address these issues I believe the number will grow. There is no downside to taking a case and until we solve that issue.