Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle.

Yes, as through this world I've wandered

I've seen lots of funny men;

Some will rob you with a six-gun,

And some with a fountain pen.

Woody Guthrie might have been writing about the insurance industry in this country. Profits on car insurance were up 12% in 2014 and they were up 26.5% last year. According to Mr. Ken Thompson, the chief executive of Insurance Ireland, they will be up another 25% this year. My colleague, Deputy Smith, has quoted from the briefing document that was given by civil servants in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to the previous Minister, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, last year.

In it they cast some doubt on whether the root cause of insurance price increases was, fundamentally, as a result of high compensation awards, fraud, etc. Instead they pointed towards attempts by these companies to boost profits by hiking prices to claw back losses made in the period 2010 to 2014. Let us look at that. The industry claims that between 2010 and 2014, it made losses on car insurance of €585 million. However, with insurance, of all industries, it is not a good idea to look at a narrow window of a couple of years because of the way claims pay out. One needs to take a longer view. For example, I could say that industry profits in 2005 - one year - were €582 million which would wipe out all the losses it made during those tricky years. Let us take the long view.

Between 1994 and 2014, the insurance industry made pre-tax profits on car insurance in this State of €2.866 billion. This is an incredible figure. The Motor Insurance Advisory Board, MIAB, reported in 2002 that in the years 1983 to 1999, the return on car insurance in this State was 11 times the return, in terms of profits for the industry, than was the case in the UK. Between 2002 and 2008, according to the industry's blue book, that is, the statistics it produces each year, the profits as a percentage of claims paid were as follows: in 2003, it was 45.9%; in 2004, it was 60.2%; in 2005, it was a whopping 61.6%; in 2006, it was, 43.6%; and in 2007, it was 47%. It is quite clear there have been massive profits and profiteering by the insurance industry on car insurance in the State over decades. If there is to be an investigation, it must involve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - not some of it. The MIAB's executive summary report, produced by Dorothea Dowling in 2002, stated:"It has not been this board's experience that insurers have willingly provided all material information in the fulsome manner which the Minister is entitled to expect." Let there be no business secrets here. The industry should be compelled to open the books for full inspection by servants of the State. We would be inclined to vote for the Sinn Féin amendment to the Fianna Fáil motion. We support the idea of an investigation, we want pressure to be brought to bear and we believe the amendment firms things up a bit. However, we have been here before. In 2002, the MIAB report made 67 recommendations, many of which were positive and some made a difference, but it did not change the model of insurance we have in the State. It did not touch the for-profit model and now, 14 years later, here we are back to square one. A new investigation can come forward with positive proposals and can make a difference but we will be back here again in a few years' time if the root cause of the problem is not addressed, that is, if we keep the for-profit model that has ruled the roost on this issue down through the years. It is time for that model to be dismantled and changed.

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