Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move:

"That Dáil Éireann:

recognises that:— it has been 19 months since the Government first established the Cost of Insurance Working Group and there has been no tangible progress in reducing insurance premiums;

— there are several barriers to obtaining motor insurance in Ireland;

— vehicles that are ten years old, but with a valid National Car Test certificate (NCT), are being deemed uninsurable;

— returning emigrants have difficulty obtaining insurance as driving experience from foreign countries such as the United States of America, Canada, Australia etc. is not taken into consideration;

— drivers with five penalty points are deemed uninsurable by a number of insurance companies, even if the points were gained over a three year period;

— insurance premiums are higher because of insurance fraud, which costs the industry over €200 million every year;

— since Insurance Confidential was established in 2003 by Insurance Ireland, over 9,000 new cases of suspected fraud have been received and investigated to date; and

— the total amount paid out in motor claims by Insurance Ireland members increased by 23 per cent from 2011 to 2016, while in the same years the amount paid out by the Personal Injuries Assessment Board (PIAB) across all classes of insurance increased by 50 per cent; andcalls on the Government to:— ensure that the motor insurance sector does not discriminate against individuals with older vehicles that hold a valid NCT, by providing reasonable quotations;

— ensure that the motor insurance sector does not discriminate against returning emigrants by accepting foreign driving experience as valid experience;

— make it mandatory for insurance companies to provide cover to people who have five penalty points or over, as insurance is a legal requirement for all drivers;

— allow people access to the European Union market for insurance that will be regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland;

— work towards eradicating the culture of insurance fraud in Ireland, by introducing stricter penalties for those found to be pursuing fraudulent insurance claims;

— introduce an independent assessment board as a means of dealing with claims assessments, to prevent exaggerated and misleading claims being pursued and settled;

— ensure that when accessing claims/awards, reference is made to best international practice guidelines; and

— deliver real transparency on how premiums are calculated and why quotes are refused, with access to a robust independent insurance appeals process."

I will share time with Deputies Michael Healy-Rae and Harty. I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the motion before the House and compliment my colleagues on tabling it. We could spend the day discussing insurance, including developments in motor and business insurance in recent years. Motor insurance costs remain at an unacceptably high level and the motion has been tabled by the Rural Independent Group in an effort to secure Government action on several key areas that could go a long way towards improving the picture.

8 o’clock

The insurance working group's report, published in January last year, recommended 71 actions that the group felt would help to stabilise the motor insurance industry in Ireland and stop the seesawing of prices. The recommendations ranged from looking at measures that would cap some injury awards and reduce legal costs, to steps that would clamp down on fraudulent claims. The deadline set for the implementation of all but 18 of those 71 recommendations has already passed but little more than half of them have seen action being taken. I have a feeling the Government has taken its foot off the accelerator with these recommendations on the basis that motor insurance costs have dropped in the past year. Before that, we saw a crippling 70% hike in private car insurance prices between January 2014 and July 2016, an increase well above what happened throughout the rest of Europe. If we look at graphs indicating the cost of motor insurance in Ireland over the past decade, we see the seesawing I referred to earlier. Can anybody be confident that we will not see another big hike in the year ahead?

Apart from the obvious effects that the still-high cost of motor insurance is having on the budgets of private motorists and businesses, there have been some very disturbing knock-on effects. Of particular concern is the increase in the number of people driving on roads the length and breadth of the country without any insurance cover, a huge number of them doing so due to the fact that they could no longer afford to pay the premium. The Motor Insurers' Bureau of Ireland, MIBI, which was established to compensate victims of road traffic accidents caused by uninsured and unidentified vehicles, has estimated that there are more than 150,000 uninsured vehicles on our roads. It states that accident claims arising out of crashes by drivers in uninsured or untraced vehicles have increased by almost 10% in the past two years.

This motion also highlights how insurance companies are unfairly discriminating against several categories of drivers in terms of the cost and even the availability of insurance cover. We can take people whose cars are ten years old but still in perfect condition, as most of the insurance companies do not want to know about them. Surely the fact that these vehicles must pass a rigorous national car test every year proves their roadworthiness, and companies should not be allowed to refuse them insurance cover. Also unfairly treated are drivers who have been driving a company car or van for years and who may change jobs. As they have been covered by their previous employer's insurance, they will not be given the benefit of a no-claims bonus under their own names. It is a scandal that must be addressed. In many cases these people have clocked up a higher mileage of safe and incident-free driving than other drivers with their own policies.

I raised the problems facing returning emigrants during Leaders' Questions last April and still they are facing the same difficulties with motor insurance. If they have been out of the country for two years, they will have lost their previous no-claims bonus, and most companies still refuse to give proper recognition to driving experience abroad. Both of these groups may have a 100% safe driving record that counts for nothing with insurance companies in Ireland.

Insurance fraud is of course a huge factor in the cost of insurance, estimated to cost the industry and ultimately every man and woman who pays a premium more than €200 million every year. I was rather shocked last week to be told in reply to a parliamentary question that there are no records kept on the number of cases of compensation for personal injury that have been thrown out of court because they were deemed fraudulent. There is no record of such cases referred to the Garda Síochána for investigation or the number of people convicted of insurance fraud. I am glad, however, to be told by the Minister for Justice and Equality that he has now "requested the Courts Service to examine the requirements, including system development and resource issues, needed to enable the compiling of such statistics going forward". Such information is vital if we want to keep track of these scam artists who are doing their best to screw the insurance companies with fraudulent claims. Again, who pays for this only me, you and everyone else who pays an insurance premium.

For many of these criminals, staging accidents is like a professional occupation, usually with the help of family or friends who all get a cut of the proceeds.

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