Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Matt Shanahan, who is probably on his way. I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the Bill. I commend Deputy Doherty on all of the work he has done, over many years, in highlighting issues in our insurance industry. He has brought to light many important issues and has been relentless in his efforts to try to deal with them.

This Bill would require insurance companies to provide information to the Central Bank for each of the next four years, outlining how the cost of claims have fallen as a result of the new personal injury guidelines. I support this idea. It is one way of helping us to understand how effective the personal injury guidelines have been. Too often, the impact of policy is not analysed enough. Guidelines or rules are often just introduced and it is assumed that they will achieve the intended results.

It is important that when changes to anything are introduced, we have mechanisms in place to help us to judge whether the changes have been effective. It may also help guide us towards any future amendments which need to be made or any additions which need to be made to the personal injury guidelines.

It will also serve the purpose of monitoring companies and prices to see if and how they have passed these savings onto their consumers, in the form of reduced prices. In my previous role as president of the Irish Road Haulage Association, IRHA, we found trying to tackle the insurance issue was like banging your head off a brick wall, because the competition authority was reluctant to tackle the issue. It wanted masses of evidence before it would consider taking action, yet no such evidence was available because the insurance companies were not required to publish it.

Another aspect of insurance reform that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency is the issue of test cases. The UK financial regulator takes test cases to court on behalf of a certain sector and the result of that case becomes the precedent or benchmark for all other similar cases. However, in Ireland, each individual has to pay €5,000 to take his or her claim to the commercial court. This is unacceptable. It makes it more difficult for businesses or individuals to legally challenge insurance companies. Many publicans are in this position. We need to update the role of our Financial Regulator to have it take test cases in a similar way to the UK. After all, the Financial Regulator is there to serve the public. Many small enterprises or individuals do not have the financial resources to take an insurance company to court and this will be even more problematic, since many business have been closed for the past 14 months.

As this Bill relates to insurance, it is important to note that thousands of people are unable to get on the road due to delays in our driver testing. We hope motorists will have cheaper motor insurance costs, but we also need to ensure that people can get on the road. The Road Safety Authority, RSA, and the National Driver Licence Service, NDLS, have been lax in bringing back theory tests, driving lessons and driving tests. All of the inaction serves to undermine any savings which could be garnered from insurance reform, as well as preventing those out of work from availing of job prospects, particularly in rural Ireland.

I have constantly called on the RSA to bring in an online portal for the theory test. When it did bring it in, it only suited one quarter of the computer users because of the chosen software. When one tries to apply, one discovers there is no test available until 2023. If these new personal injury guidelines result in people being charged less for insurance, that is great news, but it is not that useful to someone who cannot get themselves up and running because of delays in other areas. While that is a tangent from the contents of this Bill, it illustrates the lack of joined-up thinking in the system.

Overall, I believe it is important to have transparency in our insurance industry. Insurance companies make billions of euro in profits as a result of governments making insurance a legal requirement in certain aspects of life. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable that we have transparency, careful monitoring and protections for the consumer.

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