Results 8,421-8,440 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: To be clear, there are some problems in trying to make this work because we do not want to make the same mistakes that were made in the past. While we have been able to get action No. 61 back on track and into a green space, the other actions which flow from it, actions Nos. 62 and 63, which are due to be completed next year, have moved into the orange space, unfortunately. I chair 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: I do not have the actual framework for the plan but the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport is the responsible actor here. The Department of Justice and Equality might be the lead actor, but the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport is responsible for this. We are continuing to work with it. As it has a number of measures it must complete under this plan, it is as pressed as...

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: This is recommendation No. 22 under action No. 45. It was flagged as being partially completed but with a further delay likely. The review has been commenced, but it has proven more difficult than anticipated to establish the reliable set of data and therefore the relevant action point was not completed for the first quarter. A data set based on the aggregation of cases submitted for...

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 heard an anecdote, I do not know if it is true, that when a person died in a motor accident for the first time ever, the coroner's report said that this must not be allowed to happen ever again because it is something that is absolutely preventable. The cost of insurance working group is looking at the cost of insurance and it prioritised motor in the first instance. It is not for want of...

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: This significant issue is being raised with us in our work on employers' liability and public liability insurance as part of second phase of this process. During my recent engagement with the Law Society, I raised the issue of suspected claims harvesting by solicitors' firms. We will continue to work on that 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 what I am looking for. Since we began our work on the second phase of this process in January, a number of representative bodies have made these claims in front of the working group. I have met them formally and informally. We are looking for hard evidence. It is going to be a difficult thing to pursue. We cannot do anything unless we have actual evidence. When I met...

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: As I said in my opening statement, I am hoping to do this in July. I think three or four things will need to be tackled if this problem is going to be properly solved for businesses. Some of the things that are being done on foot of the motor insurance report - for example, with regard to the Personal Injuries Commission - will flow into the costs that are being paid for employers liability...

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 thank the Senator.

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 would like to say a couple of things in response to that. While the Government cannot interfere in the pricing of premiums, it cannot consider it acceptable for Insurance Ireland or anyone in the industry to look to set a signal around pricing because that would feed into the type of price-fixing or price-signalling behaviour about which people have raised fears. We have to understand...

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 what we are working to achieve at the moment. It is one of the actions in the report.

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 understand that. It is not for me to defend how they interact with their customers. That is their side of things. I recognise that the insurance industry is co-operating on a number of fronts. While the premium breakdown for drivers is important, there are things that are more important, such as building the national claims information database. They are doing a number of things. I do...

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 we are going to force them to do that because I do not want to use that language. They are going to do it because we have mandated it in our plan and the protocol will be agreed by the end of June. That is the reporting deadline. It is going to happen.

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: Obviously we cannot price the premiums ourselves because of EU law, but there is a lot that we can do. That is the work that the Chairman has done in the committee's report and that we see is being done now in terms of the cost of insurance working group. We are getting on top of this. The trend is 2% down year on year but 6% down since July of last year. There have been five months of no...

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: In terms of things not being done, when I was before the committee before Christmas 2016, I said we were not coming at this from a standing start. Work was already under way, for example, preparing to strengthen the powers of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. That work had commenced last year. The book of quantum was published in October, I think. They were working on the new book...

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: We have an excellent working group. People have put in a huge amount of time. We set it up in July and moved to subgroups in August, which were meeting every week. People had to take on additional workloads and have worked very well together. We are now looking at breaking into a new subgroup structure for the employers' liability and public liability, EL and PL, piece. I will be able to...

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

Eoghan Murphy: This is a matter that the Chairman has consistently raised during the six years that I have been a Member of Dáil Éireann and for the three years I served on the Committee of Public Accounts, when he was Chairman of it, during which time we examined the issue in detail. Having now had responsibility for a year for the Office of Government Procurement, what we have been trying to do...

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

Eoghan Murphy: So far we have held them in Cork, Galway, Cavan and Dundalk, and Mayo and Sligo are next on our radar.

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

Eoghan Murphy: Yes, I would love to go to Kilkenny. We give advance notice through the industry representative bodies who contact their members. We also contact every Senator and Deputy in Fine Gael. Sorry, we contact all of the parties. I beg the Chairman's pardon for my slip. We have been meeting for two hours and my slip up was unintentional. It was a joke.

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

Eoghan Murphy: No, we are good.

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

Eoghan Murphy: The purpose was to use Oireachtas representative from every party or none because they are very well connected to small businesses, in particular, in every part of the country, and they have invited along their contact base. When we were in Cavan we had almost 40 companies in the room who had been invited by local political representatives. On that occasion we received excellent feedback...