Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is two years on. I remember the Minister of State's party leader, Deputy Varadkar, saying that he would give the insurance companies six months or else. We now hear the Government saying the same thing about the energy companies. The Minister of State with responsibility in this area is now basically giving the pitch the insurance industry gave immediately after the reforms, which is that this is going to take a long period to implement. It is two years on. Awards have fallen by 38%. The number of cases going through the High Court has fallen by two thirds. According to the national claims information database report for 2021, which looked at 2.1 million premiums, insurance premiums dropped by 2%. The evidence we can see from the Alliance for Insurance Reform information and the anecdotal information we are getting is that prices are going back up again. The companies themselves told us that, if we were not seeing premiums reduce by 20%, we needed to ask serious questions. I have been asking these questions. We have proposed legislation that would enforce transparency on the insurance companies and make them show that they are passing on these reductions.

See this speech in context