Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State has said, this is a technical amendment. Sinn Féin does not oppose it. It is the only amendment on Report Stage.

I have made my views known about some of the legislation, which does not really do much. There are big questions about the gathering of information by the Central Bank and what the Minister of State plans to do about the insurance industry pocketing subsidies that were paid by the taxpayer and were supposed to be there for companies, not the insurance industry.

I wish to focus on the measures on dual pricing contained within this legislation. The Bill seeks only a report on their implementation. I am very glad we are getting closer every day to the point at which dual pricing will be banned in this State. It is an exploitative practice. I sometimes criticise the Central Bank for being slow to respond, but I am very glad that, in fairness to it, on the back of my complaint nearly two years ago and the meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank, it has acted and has brought forward these recommendations. I think it is well known this is not the way in which I would have banned dual pricing. I think there is still far more wriggle room for exploitation within the insurance industry here compared with the position in Britain. That is concerning as to how this will be applied and implemented, and I have raised that with the Central Bank both in written correspondence and verbally.

I am more concerned about it now, given some of the information coming out of Britain, which has a far harder ban than what we are planning here. It is clear the British insurance industry is finding or trying to find ways around these measures and pricing the same risk differently, depending on the mechanism used to take out the insurance in the first instance. For example, a person who was an online customer a number of years ago is pegged against that online price as opposed to the price that person would have paid had he or she taken out the insurance through contacting the insurer in the first place. The industry is still finding ways to involve itself in differential pricing. The difference is that in the North and in Britain, from day one there cannot be differential pricing in the market, whereas the Central Bank here will allow differential pricing up to the first year. That raises concern.

That said, I recognise we have come a long way from a free-for-all for the industry, whereby hundreds of millions of euro was additionally charged on more than 2.5 million customers through this type of practice. The Bill will drive down insurance prices, all things being equal, but we know the insurance industry always finds some excuse to put prices up again. This needs to be monitored very carefully. The Dáil, the Oireachtas and particularly the Central Bank need to be agile regarding this ban, which will come in on 1 July. It is only weeks away now. We need to be sure of the intention of the Central Bank. My original intention more than two years ago when I made my major complaint, and the intention, I believe, of all Members of the Dáil, is to make sure insurance is priced fairly and based on risk, not other factors that would be seen to be exploitative.

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