Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The four of us here were all members of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform when it held an in-depth investigation and discussion about motor insurance in late 2016. The Minister of State mentioned it in his report along with the work being done by the cost of insurance working group.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this long-awaited Bill which we will be supporting as a party. The Bill, as the Minister of State outlined, enables the Central Bank to gather and publish regularly data on insurance claims. At present, 70% of those claims are settled outside either the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, or the courts, with 20% in the PIAB and 10% in the courts. There is no objective way of measuring or understanding what is happening in the 70% of the sector to which I refer. This weakness is a deterrent, particularly for new entrants or potential entrants into the market who are looking at the market and have little visibility on what is happening here.

While the Bill is welcomed, it must be acknowledged it has taken far too long to get here. It is another example of making an announcement and yet failing to deliver. Neither I nor my party will delay the Bill, either today or at any other Stage. This legislation was meant to be enacted at the end of 2017 and here we are at the end of 2018, a full year after its initial deadline.

As customers continue to come to terms with excessive insurance premia, the Government recently released its seventh update on the cost of motor insurance and employer and public liability insurance. Motor insurance customers, businesses, charities, sports clubs and many others continue to face insurance premia that are far in excess of what is justified or fair. The Minister of State and I have had many discussions at committee, both when he was a member and, subsequently, as Minister of State, about fraud, exaggerated claims, etc.

According to the CSO, the premia have reduced by 11% in 2017. Since June 2013, premia have increased by 32%. Many Senators of all parties have examples of policyholders who have experienced increases far in excess of 32%. The CSO is limited in what it can account for. When someone wishes to make an alteration to an insurance policy mid-year, for example, to change address, the insurance companies are charging well in excess of what would be seen to be fair.

For businesses, there is no index that records the cost of insurance. This has led some to believe insurance premia have stopped growing in motor insurance at the expense of business insurance, which is not monitored.

Fianna Fáil has long been calling for reform of the insurance market. In June 2016, a motion, tabled by Fianna Fáil in the Lower House and passed, called on the Government to reform the insurance market to make it more transparent and to ultimately reduce premia. In response, the Government created the working group, which published its initial recommendation in January 2017. We welcome those proposals but delivery, as the Minister of State will acknowledge, is key. Like many other reports, its implementation has simply not been good enough or quick enough. While the industry needs to be heard, so too do the countless customers who feel ripped off as their insurance premia go through the roof. We all have discussed it. We are getting older, our cars are getting older, we are driving less and yet our premia are going up significantly with no claims.

It is not too much to ask for a consumer to be informed as to the reason or reasons the premium has increased. This action point has more or less been abandoned by the Government. Instead, insurance companies now only have to provide generic reasons for increases offering customers little or no clarity whatsoever. The recommendations for policyholders to be informed of claims made against them before a settlement has been reached has stalled and it looks like the Government is rolling over on this point also.

A mechanism to set up the anti-fraud unit within An Garda Síochána was to be approved by the third quarter of 2017. This has yet to be achieved. I acknowledge the Minister of State's comment at the end of his contribution, which is not in the speech, in terms of meeting Mr. Drew Harris. I welcome that because not that long ago in committee the Minister of State was more or less saying that he did not want to divert gardaí away from real crime onto this issue. Of course, there is gangland crime and other crime that needs to be dealt with, but fraud, at any level, either completely staged claims or, indeed, fraudulent increasing or massively exaggerating claims, is bad, and we are all paying for it. It is important to bear in mind that 8% of motor insurance policyholders are claiming at the expense of the other 92%. While these claims are not all fraudulent - nobody is saying they are - many policyholders are not making claims and are still experiencing very significant increases.

On top of all of this, we have the ongoing investigation by the European Commission and the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability, CPCC, on alleged anti-competitive behaviour. Individuals, small businesses, charities and sports clubs are all facing unsustainably high insurance premia. It is a direct threat to our competitiveness and we must tackle the issue. I acknowledge that the Bill helps in that regard. The Minister of State acknowledged, and I would concur, that there is no silver bullet but we need to chip away at it in every way we can. We need to reduce the number of road deaths. We need to reduce the number of crashes. We need greater enforcement. Earlier today we were talking about speeding and the ways we deal with speeding. We need to look at proportionality but, equally, we need to look at those who are repeat offenders and, perhaps, look at offenders' salaries in terms of the penalty they pay because an €80 fine to somebody on a lot of money is not the same as to somebody on very little money. We certainly need to be looking at ways of ensuring better driver behaviour and, in terms of other claims, better general behaviour.

Equally, we need to acknowledge that the high premia are a result of high payouts. The Minister of State has said so previously and I would agree. We need to get the number of claims down. We need to get the amount of claims down and the value of those claims down. We can do that in many different ways, including by enforcing the road traffic laws in many different ways and providing better roads so that there are not as many crashes. Insurance companies must pursue. I am glad to see some judges are now throwing out claims where they tell the plaintiff that just because he or she managed to slip somewhere does not mean he or she is entitled to €60,000, €80,000 or €100,000 when a significant share of the blame was his or her own.

The key recommendations of the cost of insurance working group were around protecting the consumer, improving data availability, improving the personal insurance claims environment, reducing the cost of the claims process, reducing insurance fraud and, as I have outlined, promoting road safety.Those recommendations include action to enhance levels of transparency, which is the purpose of this Bill, and to improve the personal injuries litigation framework through a number of measures such as ensuring potential defendants are notified in sufficient time, tackling fraudulent or exaggerated claims and ensuring suitable training.

I acknowledge what the Minister of State said about the change in the other legislation in terms of asking people to make a claim or announce their claim earlier. There were issues in the pubs and restaurant industry. People were coming in two years after an alleged claim, which may not have been a claim in the first place, and saying they slipped in that premises two years ago. All the video footage may be gone and many of the staff will have changed. It is an important part of the Bill and I welcome its inclusion.

I do not want to delay the Bill. I am very supportive of it and of the work the Minister of State is doing. However, the more we do and the faster we can deliver on it, the better. That will be for the benefit of every consumer, club, business, NGO and so on. Everybody is paying insurance, and everybody feels insurance is dead money to a certain extent in that it goes out but one never sees a return on it, and one is not supposed to see a return. If we can manage to keep the number of claims down, we can reduce the cost of premiums. I commend the work the Minister of State is doing. We will help him to do that as much as we can.