Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I believe this Bill is very relevant and will have a significant impact on people's decisions when contemplating an action through the legal system in the future. SMEs ranging from haulage operators to crèches, community and voluntary groups, GAA, soccer and sports clubs, hotels, clubs, pubs and restaurants are dealing with the lack of insurance reform every day. Their unsustainable insurance costs continue to trend upwards and they fear for the future of their organisations. Now the insurance crisis hampers their recovery from the pandemic.

Parents of young adults who have just qualified to drive but who are unable to get insurance contact me every day. They find it incomprehensible that time after time there is no adequate reform of the insurance sector to stop the gouging by all, bar none. Premiums of thousands of euro are being requested for their young adult children to start their independence.

In my former role as president of the Irish Road Haulage Association, IRHA, I led a delegation to meet the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission in Dublin to discuss cartel behaviour in the insurance sector. The meeting lasted more than two and a half hours and the result was a blank request to come back with the evidence. The evidence it required was unobtainable even though every haulage operator was having the same experience of the premiums being quoted increasing by as much as 300% on the previous year, in many cases regardless of claims history. As a result, I contacted the EU competition arm, DG Competition, and led a delegation from the IRHA to Brussels to meet it. It was more than interested in the same details that did not interest the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. DG Competition held many more meetings and what was described as a dawn raid took place in Ireland in July 2017.

I never envisaged that it would take so long to get a result from what we thought might help competition in the insurance market. It did not happen. What did happen, however, is that hundreds of haulage operators moved their operations abroad, mainly to eastern European countries where premiums for their fleets were half the price they were charged in Ireland. There has been little or no action to curb the continuing rise in the cost of premiums, which can still only be described as gouging.

I thank the former Senator, Pádraig Ó Céidigh, for drafting the Perjury and Related Offences Bill 2018. I believe it is essential and it will be the missing link in too many claims being made based on fiction, not fact. It should and will deter persons willing to lie on affidavit or under oath by putting that on a statutory criminal footing, in line with our nearest neighbour, Northern Ireland. I implore the House to support the Bill and nourish those suffering from the lack of sanction on those who lie in order to gain under false pretences.

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