Results 8,401-8,420 of 15,555 for speaker:Eoghan Murphy

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The Central Bank cannot intervene when it comes to pricing. In terms of reporting requirements and what the insurance companies - entities - report to the Central Bank, I would not be across the detail of that or the conversations they will have with it. However, we are in ongoing discussions with the industry as to what Setanta means. While I have discussed this at a high level with one...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: That is a good question. There are five entities which have applied for authorisation to operate out of Ireland. My understanding is that two of them are coming in to access the Irish market and three are Brexit-related applications seeking to do European business from here. There are another 15 companies which are looking at Ireland. The Central Bank published information on increased...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Yes but most of us deal with eight or nine companies. What we are seeing, however, is an increase in applications to do business and a couple of companies, as I was told yesterday, operating through brokers. There is more competition.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I do not want to say that is a rock-solid figure but it is a positive indication that competition is increasing in the market.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Off the top of my head, I think it is the middle of next year.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I said earlier that ten meetings have already been held with regard to the initial data sets that are being built. Progress has been made on the legislation and specifically the heads of the Bill that must be introduced, as this must be on a legislative footing. When the Chairman published the committee's report, it was all about data, lack of transparency and needing to bring data to a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: None.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The national database will publish data at an aggregate level publicly for everyone to see, whether it is a potential entrant to the market looking to compete here for business, the Central Statistics Office or even this committee, in order that we can know exactly what is happening and consider trends in the market.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: There are a few issues. The first is the introduction of Solvency II, which should protect most insurance entities from ever having to fall into a liquidation or administration scenario. That is a major change in Europe that will give some good protection. The Central Bank has increased its market intelligence in terms of understanding how entities are being regulated in their home...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: There are two issues. If a company is regulated abroad, it is not regulated here but the Central Bank regulates the operations from a code of conduct perspective. The bank also has a markets intelligence unit - I cannot remember its exact name - but it does this work. The Central Bank has been at the forefront of pushing for greater convergence when it comes to the supervision of insurance...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I have seen no evidence to suggest there are cartels operating in the insurance industry. The Senator would be aware that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is looking into this now because of information brought to its attention.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: With court awards we want to arrive at a state of consistency in the awards being given. There are a number of processes under way to achieve that consistency, bearing in mind the separation of powers and the fact the Government cannot directly intervene in awards. One of the pieces of work being done by the personal injuries commission is to bring about international benchmarking and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The commission is new and was established by our cost of insurance working group earlier this year. The former President of the High Court, Mr. Justice Kearns, is the chairperson of that commission and it has other people involved. It is working to a timeline and terms of reference detailed on page 99 or 100 in the cost of insurance working group report. It is essentially doing...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: No, but we have the newly established Court of Appeal, and it has proved to be very successful in overturning the size of awards given by either the lower courts or the High Court. That has been an important mechanism for arriving at more consistent and fairer awards from the public perspective. The Personal Injuries Assessment Board will continue to work with the Court of Appeal judges and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: It is very important that we have consistency here and that we have fair claims being paid out. We should do nothing that would impinge upon the ability of someone arriving at a just award for the injury he or she has suffered. We have to protect the legitimate claimant as well.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Yes. That book of quantum was the first book published in approximately ten years. We want to publish the book of quantum on a rolling basis, at least every three years, if not more frequently. We are also looking at a whole new type of book of quantum, which in the ideal scenario would be published by the Judiciary itself, but that is something for it to decide to do. It would contain...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: What is the action number?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Are we talking about the uninsured database?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The first thing to acknowledge is that when the Government first tried to put in place an uninsured database to track uninsured drivers a number of years ago it failed and the Garda stopped using it because it was delivering a number of false positives. It is not a simple thing to do and we need to make sure that we are doing it right because we do not want the Garda rejecting it again. I...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Yes, kind of. My officials have said that to me and I should not have repeated it.