Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to shift the terms of the debate towards looking at a public not-for-profit State-led model. Frankly, I believe the Government is being led by the self-serving propaganda of the private insurance industry. The notion that competition in the private insurance market would produce lower premiums has been proven absolute nonsense. It is exactly their competitive drive for market share and, ultimately, profit that has caused this problem. They are now trying to recover lost profits because of the madness of that blind competition as well as the collapse of Setanta Insurance, Quinn Insurance, all the massive waste on advertising and profit-taking generally. I put it to the Minister of State that we need to look at other models. One he could look it is in Manitoba in Canada which has some of the lowest driver premiums anywhere on the American continent. That model was set up precisely because premiums went through the roof in the same way as they have in our private insurance sector. A parliamentary committee was set up, representations were made, they set up a public insurance company and it has worked. I believe we need to look at that because it has ended up cheaper and better for everybody.

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