Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Murchú, who has raised a couple of different issues, including motor insurance and public liability. Let me separate the different issues and respond. The Deputy has quite correctly raised the outstanding public liability work that has to be done, and the impact which that has. He also raised motor insurance and said there was a reduction of 5% in the first half of last year. I presume the Deputy is referring to the national claims information database, NCID report published yesterday. He said that it is not sufficient, and of course he is right that it is not sufficient. It was a 20% reduction going back to 2017 from the peak of premiums and it was an additional 5% last year, at a time of an inflationary environment.

Those reductions are very important, but the reason they have been achieved is because of the programme of reform that the Government has instituted regarding insurance: changing the law on perjury and fraud and changing the operating environment for personal injuries, particularly soft tissue and small injuries that were being overwhelmingly litigated in courts. Now we see that because of the changes, matters are being resolved at the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB more quickly, more efficiently and at one twentieth of the legal costs. It is those legal costs, and the uncertainty of the claims system, that drove policies far too high. We are seeing the impact. As the Deputy said, I have met all of the different insurance companies. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, has met Insurance Ireland with me, and we have pressed very clearly the need to continue to see reductions in motor policy. The reason I am saying that is because the impact of the reforms has worked in motor insurance and it is our job now to make sure that it continues to work, that the personal injury guidelines are robust and that the PIAB process is protected at every turn.

Turning to public liability, which is a different issue and is more directly relevant to the particular centre which Deputy Ó Murchú and I have discussed. I thank him for raising it with me directly. Public liability remains outstanding, and that is a matter for the Department of Justice, which is bringing through the House at this time legislation to change the operating environment for public liability insurance. I can assure the Deputy that in all of my meetings with different insurance companies I raised the question of expanding their risk appetite further into different sectors, whether it is provision of more insurance for SMEs generally, such as high street shops. Some of the companies are and some are waiting for the legislation and the new operating environment. I also raised the different pinch points, some of which the Deputy has referenced. He is correct, and many of those have been resolved by coming together through group schemes, through creating a centralised hazard management system and being able to present that collectively to underwriters to be able to get a better deal, spread the risk and get insurance where it had not been. The Deputy is aware that the background to that, if we take for example motorcycle racing or different issues, is that many of those smaller sectors - as the Deputy has said, it is a small market - previously obtained insurance through the UK market and through a broker where the risk was spread over the UK and Ireland. Brexit disrupted that. It was one of the consequences of it. It disrupted the provision of that, the underwriting and the broker model. Many of those sectors have now had to go and find new insurance and present as a new model. Many of them have been successful and there remain those outstanding. I assure the Deputy that I raise that with every insurance company and we are trying to enhance the risk appetite where we can. However, the public liability legislation is absolutely essential.

Deputy Ó Murchú also referenced the Office to Promote Competition in the Insurance Market. I had a meeting just yesterday with that office regarding updates. I have also met a new insurance provider which is coming into the market and is going through the regulatory process with the Central Bank. I have referenced that before, OUTsurance, which has made its application to the Central Bank. That is directly as a consequence, I am told by the company, of the changes that the Government has made. There are new insurers coming into this market because we are making it a more predictable insurance environment for insurers who want to be able to provide certainty, so that they can provide lower policies and better access to insurance for everybody.

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