Ms Jacqueline Thornton:

To be fair, our point is that the transparency is there and the ability for the Central Bank to continue that transparency is there. My colleague mentioned that the Central Bank is implementing a flag to be able to identify claims that are settled under the personal injuries guidelines. The point of that is to be able to compare those to the claims that were settled in the previous years. Yes, we have Covid but the NCID started in 2019 so we have at least one year of normal times to compare with. The point is that the transparency is already there, the transparency is built into the NCID, so the comparison is allowed to be there. As time goes on and as the Central Bank collates this data and publishes it, it will come into the public domain. The politicians, as policymakers, the representative bodies and Insurance Ireland members will be able to see as a whole how the personal injuries guidelines are actually working out.

Unfortunately, until those award levels the Deputy spoke about, which are down 42%, actually start being settled, not just on the lower end of the scale with those minor injuries but also on the higher end of the scale where the main cost of claims is in those litigated claims, we will not seeing any of that playing through. We have not seen the personal injuries guidelines being applied consistently through the courts, which is exactly what Ms Murdock was talking about earlier. Until we start to see that, it does not send a message to all parties that these guidelines are being adhered to.

As director of regulation, I spend a lot of time with our members and I have done some of that questioning that Mr Murdock talked about. I am fairly confident that, in the main, our members are broadly sticking to the guidelines in their direct payments and in the PIAB payments and whatever comes afterwards because it is in their interest to do so.