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Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: There are obviously a number of factors that will have a bearing on an accident and what might come from that in terms of a claim, but our remit was to look at the costs involved in this process, in so far as they might be drivers for increased premiums. We look at the personal injuries commission and the idea of bringing forward more detailed granularity to the book of quantum or better...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: We look at the situation after the claim is made. My remit was not to look at the piece before that or actually prevent the need for making a claim. That comes under a different Department and is a much wider issue.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: One of the most helpful things that happened last year was this committee's public hearings. The committee got to hear what I was hearing privately, which was the complexity of the issue. I knew from the outset that I could not have a direct influence on the price or set the price due to a number of reasons we have gone through before about the companies having to price on risk and the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The hope is in the report. It is in the 71 actions, the detailed timelines and the owners of the actions. It is in the fact that this committee has spent so much time focused on this as well. People can see that those of us who have responsibility for this area in terms of bringing about reform are committed to bringing about that reform, doing what we can to protect the consumer, reducing...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The difficulty was with managing the time in terms of the amount of people that wanted to make an input, which is why we broke up the work into subgroups almost immediately and they began meeting weekly. Everyone has been constructive. I think everyone sees the difficulties that exist. As I mentioned earlier, we had robust discussions with Insurance Ireland to ensure that it was clear as...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: As was the case with my engagement with everyone else, there was never an issue with the legal profession in terms of its trying to help feed information into the report and to give its perspective. Our role - my role and Senator Horkan's role - was to use our own judgment to decide where things lay. We were then able to draw data from some areas to try to remove some of the myths that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Absolutely, I will. As I stated, some of the actions in the report, particularly the personal injuries commission and that work, will feed across into that area, so that work is already beginning----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The working group met two weeks ago or so and we have decided our terms of reference for the engagement and how we will meet those different bodies. We already have one of them lined up for the second round of engagements. Representatives of vintners will be coming in during the last week of February or the first week of March.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I will. Representations have already been made. They were made last year.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The Chairman put it perfectly well. This is about providing as much information and detail as possible to help them make an informed decision on what the payout should be. If we look to page 100 in the report, it gives the terms of reference for the personal injuries commission and exactly what it will examine. It is about giving them that level of detail and not just detail on what the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Objective 3 in the action plan refers to the establishment of the personal injuries commission, which has already taken place. It has already met. Its chairperson, Mr. Nicholas Kearns, is a former judge.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: We considered the recommendation, but a recommendation came from the members of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport on the working group and it spoke exactly to that point.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: It carries incredible weight, but we had to weigh up other considerations which, as the Chairman pointed out, included the Judiciary and the importance of ensuring that, while we cannot dictate, we bring as much information as possible and go about this in the correct way. Judiciaries in other jurisdictions publish their version of the book of quantum and I would like to arrive at that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I think the Chairman is referring to section 30 in the Courts and Civil Liability Act. In the report, we have recommended that this be reviewed with a view to possible amendment. We noted in our work that the section may need to be improved to make it more robust so that, if it were put in place, the database would have better information that we could track. We have that in the report as...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Absolutely.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Chairman, that is an interesting point. I can understand how, having heard from PIAB that the establishment of the board never really removed the solicitors who were in the background - but of course they could not be awarded costs, apart from particular instances - that in the short term it might lead to a greater acceptance of the awards granted at the PIAB level. However, there is a risk...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Absolutely, Chairman. Let us say that were we to decide that from the beginning of 2018 we were going to do that and that insurance companies saw an upfront cost of €24 million, the solicitors might still decide to test the case in the courts so that in the years 2018 and 2019, one might have additional costs for the insurance company and therefore the consumers while solicitors are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I think Deputy Doherty is absolutely right to highlight that risk. I want to be clear that we had a lot of discussion around this in the working group about what this might mean - exactly as the Deputy laid it out - the fear of capture of our Garda Síochána by a particular industry because there was some direct relationship in pay, which I think is what the Deputy was hinting at....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Absolutely, if one were to go down this route, as they have done in the United Kingdom, there is absolutely clear separation between the money that would go into the entity and the actual operational powers and the decisions that get taken on a daily basis. One would absolutely have to have, not just a Chinese wall, all sorts of protocols and everything else in place to keep them separate....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Report on Cost of Motor Insurance: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (16 Feb 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: No precedent is being set. I am happy to engage in a lengthier debate on this issue when we have more information about how it might work and when I have received an assessment from the Department of Justice and Equality and An Garda Síochána of where they stand on the issue.