Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If I renew my motor insurance tomorrow morning and am unfortunate enough to be in a soft tissue accident, the award paid out would be about, on average, 60% less. Therefore, the insurance company, as of my renewal tomorrow morning, should be charging me a lower premium. Is that factual? We can look back to when representatives of the insurance industry were lobbying for these awards to be cut. They told us to a person that if they did not reduce insurance premiums for motorists in the region of 15% to 20% after having awards cut by 50%, then politicians should ask hard questions. These awards should be reduced right now. There is no need for delay but there is a need to be able to measure this. That is why I am disappointed that the Government was going to vote against an amendment to this legislation I put forward last week that would allow the Government to measure what the awards would be if the legislation was not introduced giving effect to the guidelines and to measure what the premium would be. That would make sure insurance companies passed on, pound for pound, all the reductions that have been secured.

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