Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While I welcome this Bill to the House, it is unsatisfactorily late for the people who suffered in the Setanta Insurance debacle. That includes both those who were insured with Setanta, and those who were involved in accidents, in which they were not at fault, with people who were insured with Setanta. They were left hanging for years on end. The way that this issue was dealt with was very unsatisfactory.

My view of life is that if people comply with the law, if people buy products that are meant to be checked by regulation, either at European or national level, they are innocent victims and should not be hung out to dry like those injured parties in accidents involving somebody who was insured with Setanta, whether the damages they suffered consisted of vehicular damage or personal injuries. Then there are the people who thought they had insurance with Setanta. They were also left hanging with no money.

If I were asked what the biggest change in recent years has been, and it is one thing I have noticed about the world, I would say it is the amazing ability to do everything very slowly, to make everything so complicated that we can never seem to get to a conclusion on any issue. If the public are left waiting, so what? That seems to be the attitude. It should not be the attitude. These are ordinary human beings going about their ordinary daily business, following the law and doing everything perfectly. As I have said, in many cases they were not insured with Setanta themselves but they were involved in an accident with someone who was. Even that person was innocent because they thought they had good, valid insurance.

I look at all the schemes that come in now such as housing schemes. We ask for the numbers of people who are successful under those schemes. I look at this debacle. We have created a society where ordinary people always seem to be the losers. I welcome this Bill coming in, and I hope that we can truly say that this will never happen again, that people driving on our roads, insured with companies that are legally allowed to operate in this jurisdiction, will never be a risk to themselves or anybody else because of the insurance that they carry.

I know one constituent with a very modest income who was involved in an accident. The reality was that having to carry this for all this period has been a huge financial burden. What did they do wrong? Nothing. They drove on the public road in a perfectly insured vehicle, they were hit by someone in a vehicle that was supposedly insured, and they were let down by the State. I have been told about all the legal complications in the High Court, the Supreme Court and whatever. My attitude is that all those things should be fought out, but in the meantime we should make sure that the ordinary small punter is sorted and work out who pays what in the end between all the big people. I have been told that is not possible. I do not believe it. When things have to be done, they can be done. I welcome what has been done, but I wonder why it took so long.

I was listening to Deputy Scanlon when he spoke about the wider issue of the inaction of the Government on insurance, particularly concerning loading. He spoke about older cars, which is a very valid issue. I believe that under the law, no insurance company should be allowed to load anybody for anything - penalty points, age of car or any of those issues - unless it can produce objective evidence that the risk is higher.

Many moons ago I was discussing getting a reduction in insurance premiums for those living on the islands. We had a special regime of lower taxation on the islands because of the small amount of roads. That provision still exists to this day on the islands. We also had a regime whereby there was no need to carry out a national car test, NCT, on cars on the islands, because taking a car off an offshore island and onto the mainland was a very expensive operation.

Inis Mór, the biggest island, might have six miles of road but they are narrow roads and people cannot get great speed on them. I was negotiating discounts for them on the same basis. I asked whether the fact they do not have to do an NCT would make a difference. In fairness, at the time the islanders got a 30% discount, but they have lost it since. They said to me that the NCT does not really make that much difference because a mechanical failure rarely causes accidents in the modern world. I know there are exceptions but insurance companies do not work on individual cases, they work on statistical risk issues. If someone can prove to me that statistically a ten or 11 year old car with an NCT is more prone to accidents and that mechanically it is more likely to fail and cause a serious accident, or an accident of any type, I will say that is fair enough and it is a justified loading, but I wonder whether there is any objective criterion. My belief is the law should state insurance companies should not be allowed to load unless they have objective criteria to prove the loading is justified and not something that is done on the back of an envelope.

I fully accept a 30 or 40 year old car is significantly different because modern vehicles are made differently and are designed to crumple in a way that reduces the damage compared to what would have happened in an equivalent car 30 or 40 years ago. I do not believe there has been that much development in the past ten or 15 years but, again, let us base it on fact. Let us base it on the model. One would have to look at all the different models of car and decide which are the safe models in terms of safety features and their ability to crumple in a serious accident in the places they should crumple and not to crumple in the places they should not crumple and provide maximum protection in the cab.

As somebody who was involved in a head-on collision I realise the importance of the driver. I was not driving as it happens, and I was lucky that day that I probably had one of the best trained drivers in the State driving me. It is certainly a credit to him that we came out with very minor injuries. Furthermore, it made a difference that we were driving in a good well-built car that was very well designed. It was a Volvo. It did what it said on the tin in terms of the way it acted. If that car were still on the road it would be well over ten years old, but its design features would not have changed. Again, I believe we have to tackle the insurance loading issue and the insurance cost issue.

This country has become particularly cruel for young people. Houses are out of their price range and their wages are reduced if they join the public service. There is also the cost of car insurance, which virtually everybody needs to get to work and for leisure purposes in the modern world. All the Government is thinking and talking about, and what the universities persistently want them to do, is pay for their education by taking out loans they will pay back when they get to work and get a job. This insurance issue needs to be tackled scientifically and the insurance companies acting as prima donnas, without any explanation to anybody and without any evidence, has to be eliminated.

I welcome the Bill. Is fearr deireanach ná go brách, ach tá sé seo thar a bheith deireanach. Is maith an rud é go bhfuil sé ag teacht faoinár mbráid. An bhfuil an tAire Stáit in ann liom an mbeidh an reachtaíocht seo achtaithe roimh sos an tsamhraidh, nó nach mbeidh? Will the Bill be enacted before the summer recess and will it be law by then, or are we just having a preliminary debate about something for which people will again have to wait for the final conclusion of the Bill, having waited far too long already?

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