Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate this evening on the costs of insurance. We could probably all use our time citing cases which have heard about in our constituency offices in regard to the costs of insurance for people who have no choice but to have cars and small businesses which have no choice but to have insurance. I want to cite one case of a young man in Donegal who has to have a car for work and was quoted €6,000 for car insurance. He would be working for a year just to insure his car. Those are the kinds of increases people are facing throughout the country. It is over three years since this crisis was flagged. The action which has been taken is quite disappointing when one sees the time taken to get the reports of the insurance working group.

The myths the insurance companies have been putting out must be dispelled. We hear the narratives that fraud, legal costs, the costs of claims and so on are causing the increase in the cost of insurance policies. The most interesting sentence in the report on the costs of motor insurance is that the working group did not find that legal costs were a major contributory factor in the recent increases in premiums. The working group set up to look at it has shot out of the water the reasons put by the insurance industry about costs.

I believe it is true that the reason the costs have gone up is that insurance companies' returns on investments have gone down over the last couple of years. That is why. It is because of the business model of the insurance companies. That is what has lumped the cost on. Yet, the Government buys into the narrative that fraud, legal costs and everything else is lumping it on.

It is worth noting that Zurich Insurance made $2.9 billion in profits in 2015. Allianz made €10.5 in profits in 2016. These are extremely profitable companies that are gouging their own customers because they know they will get away with it. That is the bottom line. They know they can do it. As was mentioned earlier, due to the fact that it is a legal requirement to have at least third-party insurance in this country if one wants to drive, there is an onus on the State to ensure that people can achieve that minimum standard. If that means the State should establish its own insurance company to provide that, we should be doing that and it should have been done already. We should not have to say that it should be done. The only way to put manners on the insurance companies is to provide insurance for people. The companies will then change their tune.

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