Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Paul Murphy and I are sharing time.

I thank Deputy Doherty for this Bill and for continuing to bang the drum on trying to end the insurance rip-off. This Bill addresses one of the more obnoxious practices of the insurance industry, that of essentially punishing its most loyal customers for being loyal. It is an outrageous policy and of course it hits at the loyal customer. It also hits at the vulnerable customer who does not know how or feel confident to challenge an insurance company over increased insurance premiums. It is a rotten practice and it should be banned. That has happened in other countries but, of course, despite all the hand-wringing by those in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on this issue, they do not actually want it and they want to delay. There will be reviews. They need to wait for this, that or the other. I am so bored with that story from the Government because it is a story we have heard for years.

I remember I organised a meeting at the Red Cow Moran Hotel in 2017, when there was a particularly bad spike in motor insurance that threatened to run half the taxi drivers in the country off the road as well as hitting young drivers, punishing young drivers and so on.

Then finance committees were looking into it, reports were done and there were lists of recommendations as long as one's arm. What happened? Nothing really happened and the insurance rip-off continues. The Government does not want to do anything about it. We heard from some of its spokespeople that the reason it is unwilling to do so is its unwillingness to challenge the market. The spokespeople talked also of how it might upset competition. That is the essence of it. We must not upset competition, in other words, the private market. We cannot do it because we might deter these vampire insurance companies, for that is indeed what they are.

The insurance companies also lie straight out about the reasons for high insurance premiums. We had all the nonsense about how it was all due to fraud and that the fraudulent public were ripping us all off. Looking at the facts it can be seen that is not the case at all. Since 2009 premiums are up 42% while the number of claims is down 42%. Injury claims are down 20%. The frequency of claims is down 40%. The cost of claims per policy is down 3% but the profits of the insurance industry are running at about 9%, nearly double those made by the very profitable insurance industry in the UK. The insurance companies have used nonsense and lies to justify price gouging and rip-offs.

This has been serious not just for the young motorist and the loyal customer but it also has much deeper consequences because insurance covers so many other things. Taking the example of childcare, half of childcare operators in this country nearly shut down at the end of 2019 because one of the two providers of insurance to the sector decided to pull out and the remaining one took the opportunity to jack up average insurance premiums from €3,000 a year to €9,000 because it had a monopoly. As it happened, there was intervention, there were marches and so on and something was done about that but that is the way the insurance companies operate. They have us over a barrel. In spring of 2020 we had similar issues where they tried to take advantage of Covid and said they would not insure people in the context of Covid-19. There was intervention but the fact is that this is where these insurance companies have us. This extends to other areas of insurance such as home insurance. I will not go into health insurance except to state that there should not be private health insurance. There should not be profiteering from health. The only reason we have it is that there is a two-tier system. The public system is run down to bits and, out of fear, people are forced to pay extortionate amounts to private health insurance companies. That is money being leached away from the investment in the public health system which we need.

People Before Profit absolutely supports Deputy Doherty's Bill, but we must go further. Insurance is too much of a rip-off, they have us too much over a barrel. We need a not-for-profit State insurance company. This has been done in places like Canada and elsewhere where insurance is not a rip-off and is done on a not-for-profit basis because it is too important to many sectors of our society.

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