Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I do. I want to raise two issues, one of which is dual pricing. I have countless examples of people coming to me on the issue of dual pricing. When I talk about dual pricing I am not referring to introductory offers, which can range from 10% to 20% up to a certain value. I am talking about excluding them and looking at the price using the exact same data on which the insurance company has priced the renewal quote. In some cases, it is huge. I had a case of a 21 year old woman who was working part-time. She got a loan from the credit union and bought a car for €4,000. Her insurance premium was just over €4,000. I asked her to give me all her details. I put them into the same company's website and I got the premium for €1,200 cheaper than her renewal quote. That is dual pricing in action. That company, Liberty Insurance online, offers a maximum reduction of 10% or up to the value of €150. Even if we were to discount that €150, it would still be more than €1,000 for the same person, the same risk, the same company and two different prices.

How would the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman be able to find the information? What powers does he have to be able to go in and get that? To take the case I mentioned, I have not given any details. I do not think I gave the name of the company. I gave the financial details. What powers does Mr. Deering have to investigate whether, in respect of that case, there were discriminatory or unfair practices? We have an industry that is under investigation by the European competition authority. It was subject to raids and so on a number of years ago. At the core of that is not sharing data. What powers does Mr. Deering have to get to the bottom of that? He mentioned that it was challenging. That is my first question.