Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I spoke about it this afternoon. By a happy coincidence, the Alliance for Insurance Reform, AIR, today launched a major nationwide campaign to support the Government reforms of the insurance industry and to ensure that the reforms promised for next January go through on schedule. The Tánaiste told us that if she moves on it as early as next week, we will get it through before January.

This campaign will use all possible bells and whistles to press home the point. It will continue until the two pieces of legislation that are in the works at present have passed through the Houses of the Oireachtas and are enacted. The AIR is mounting this campaign because it is clear that as the prospect of legislation looms over them, the vested interests are girding their loins for one last desperate throw of the dice. The villains of this particular piece come from two directions. One is the insurance industry itself and the other is the legal profession. Rather like Senator Ó Murchú I do not like to single out anybody, but in this case I am prepared to single out those two areas. Both sets of villains have done very well out of the rest of us for a very long time. Now that the game is up, neither party is ready to give in without a fight. The legal profession in particular has reacted to the setting up of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board with a ferocity that reminds me of the publicans' opposition to the smoking ban. Senator Bohan is not here tonight to have a go at me on that one.

Did the Senators hear the claim this week that the PIAB is unconstitutional? I have no doubt that there will be a constitutional challenge to it before long. That is all the more reason to make haste in bringing the legislation onto the Statute Book. I would love to see it brought before this House next week, as the Minister has promised. Let us continue to remind her of that promise. If there is to be a constitutional challenge, the sooner it happens and is dealt with, the better for us all and for the nation as a whole.