Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see the Minister answering questions on insurance because it seemed to me at times that the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, has been a lone voice in Government talking about insurance. I am glad to see the Minister taking these questions as the Minister serving in Cabinet with responsibility.

The bottom line here is that there are sectors of business in this country to which an Irish insurer is not willing to offer cover. It is all very fine for people to bash the insurance companies, and I will do that too when I need to do it, but that they will not even provide insurance to certain sectors tells us there is something fundamentally wrong. The nub of this is when those award levels, particularly for soft tissue injuries, will come more into line with other jurisdictions as set out in the Personal Injuries Commission report.

When it comes to fraud, notwithstanding the reference the Minister made to one case which I am not familiar with, the general view is that there is no deterrent to somebody taking a bogus claim. I am certainly not aware of cases that have been brought right through the system. We have tried to get data from the Courts Service and the Minister for Justice and Equality. There is no data. We cannot get any data whatsoever as to the number of cases brought before the courts relating to alleged insurance fraud, not least the number of actual convictions. Could we start by getting some useful data because there seems to be no down side to people chancing their arm and taking a fraudulent claim? It seems to be a no-lose situation.

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