Mr. Anthony Brennan:

I will start. In the UK we have a very small share of the motor market. It is certainly well less than our motor share here. The difference is that in the UK the change was in the form of one-for-one guidelines and they can be mapped easily enough. What we have here is a move from the book of quantum, which is a set of guidelines, and there is not a one-for-one match. It is going to be very difficult at an individual claim level to say exactly what would have been paid on the claim in the past. The Deputy mentioned the national claims information database, which contains rich information and tells us the total cost of claims. This is where we will see the real effect of this coming through. In the same report, we will see the effect on premiums and the two can be matched.

What has happened in the UK is a one-for-one match, whereby we can see the award under the new guidelines and what it would have been under the old guidelines. We do not have this here. They are quite different and there are ranges. Trying to match them one for one would be quite subjective. If anything, we could play a game by stating the award would have been higher under the old awards but here is what it is. The best way to monitor this would be through the national claims information database. The Deputy has brought a Bill to the Dáil and I suggest we engage through Insurance Ireland to see whether we could add some extra fields to the national claims information database. It could be another way of monitoring the exact impact of these new awards.