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

I welcome the opportunity to speak tonight on the issue of car insurance and the reports that are before the House. I will start with the committee report. It states that "[t]he single most important issue identified during [our] hearings was the lack of transparency and shortfall in data-sharing in the insurance sector". I am in favour of shedding light on the activities of a secret industry but I disagree with the statement. I do not believe that to be the single most important issue. The single most important issue is the fact that private insurance companies are making huge profits while utterly failing to provide affordable motor insurance for the majority of people. According to Central Bank data the Minister of State's committee got a hold of, these companies and this industry made €2.86 billion in profits on car insurance alone in the years 2002 to 2017. The committee must give more than a faint nod to that fact when it states that "the premise that recent losses are the reason for insurance premium rises does not hold". This clearly points to the fact of profiteering. The committee goes on to state that "claims and awards are not the driving force behind steep increases..." contrary to the arguments of the insurance industry. Those final words are mine and not those of the report. The report continues, "the level of premium increases far outstrips the actual increase in the amount of claims paid out by the industry." Therefore, the Minister of State's committee is underlining and backing up the argumentation made by motor insurance justice campaigners and socialists and we on the left that profiteering is the root cause, but does not have the courage to come out and say explicitly that that is the case.

Then we have the Government's report. The Minister of State wrote the introduction to the report. He states:

The burden for reforming the insurance sector naturally rests with the industry. I believe that participants in the industry recognise this and I am sure they will deliver the necessary reform to ensure a stable, transparent and open market place for motor insurance.

That is an incredible statement. Why on earth would he believe that the industry would deliver a stable, transparent and open marketplace. It does not and has never done so and it does not want to do so because it masks the trickery that takes place in order to accumulate those massive profits that I referred to earlier. Naturally the burden for reforming the insurance sector rests with the industry. The Minister of State might as well say that naturally the fox must be trusted to look after the chickens. There can be no faith or trust in the people who run this industry. It is not just we on these benches who say it. A hell of a lot of people who are being ripped off when buying car insurance would agree.

I will return to the committee report. Buried deep within it, there are a couple of points that point the way forward on the issue. A proposal that was made by our representative on the committee that the State assume the responsibility to provide motor insurance as an essential public utility and provide motor insurance on a progressive non-profit basis that takes account of people's ability to pay and this was recommended in the official committee report. The report actually outlines the steps that might be taken. One good recommendation is that "the Minister commission a study on the operations, benefits and weaknesses of state insurance models such as those in existence in Canada and New Zealand with a view to possible implementation in Ireland". That is a very good recommendation.

If it was taken up seriously, we might look at the example of the Canadian province of Manitoba. In 1971, a Manitoba public insurance company was established to provide basic compulsory car insurance. Forty-five years later it is still providing one of the cheapest car insurance services in North America. Part of its remit is to reduce costs through a transparent charging system that does not discriminate by profiling particular categories of drivers. Young drivers in particular in this country would be very interested to hear a little more about that. However, the Government's concern in its report is to bury recommendations such as that one. Why? It is because the Government supports a completely different model, which is a for-profit and pro-big business model. It is a model where the market is king. In other words, precisely the model that has failed tens of thousands - even hundreds of thousands - of motorists in this country.

We argue for a model of a completely different type, which is based on social needs and the needs of the motorists and which puts - Deputy Boyd Barrett will be delighted for the plug - people before profit. Those are the kinds of proposals that would be implemented by a left Government but we have no faith in the insurance industry to reform itself or in the Minister of State's Government to bring forward proposals of that kind, but it is what is needed.

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