Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senators for their thoughts on this matter. There is a full focus on motor insurance. It is the only insurance which people are legally obliged to have. A person who brings a car on to the road is obliged to have the vehicle taxed and legally obliged to have it insured. There is no other legal obligation to have insurance. That is why the full focus is on motor insurance.

Motor insurance also accounts for the vast majority - between 60% and 70% or perhaps a little more - of insurance claims. We are focusing on motor insurance first and employment liability and public liability insurance will follow. That is the appropriate approach.

The database of the companies belongs to the insurance companies. The Central Bank have been working on this since the legislation was published. Work has been taking place in parallel with the legislation, prior to the Bill's publication and as it has moved through the Houses. The big body of work is the review going back for ten years. I expect an analysis of the ten-year period up to and including 2018 to be published in quarter 3 of 2019. We will have a decade of information on motor insurance to analyse. A large body of work is being done and it will allow us to get started.

We will see the settlement channels. The Senator asked for whom this information is being gathered. It is to provide an analysis of what is happening to policymakers and the insurance industry. Senator Horkan made the point that we do not know what the settlement channels are. We have sight of less than 30% of the cases that go through the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB and we have no information on the other 70% of PIAB cases. I have met all the insurance companies and they all have different business models, settlement channels and structures. Some insurance companies will settle early without a medical report. I call this "go away money". Commercially, that is their business model and it works for them because they are profitable. However, I do not agree with that model.

At the other end of the spectrum, another company will fight cases involving people who have been impacted and have legitimate claims every step of the way and for every penny. That is the other side of the business model and I do agree with that either because it involves fighting people who have been legitimately impacted and cases that require damages to be paid. Then there is everybody else in between. We do not know what the correct model is. While I can understand the commercial reality of settling early and of fighting every claim every step of the way, I do not agree with either model. There should be a space in the middle because that would be a more appropriate model.

If there are too many companies settling without a medical report, that could become a policy issue and result in the Oireachtas changing the law to prevent that practice by providing that companies cannot settle without a medical report. That is just an example. I do not know what I can do in the case of companies which fight legitimate claims every step of the way, which is not correct practice either. There is then everything else in between. The analysis will look back ten years from the end of this year. There is considerable information and data flow to be analysed and the analysis will throw up many issues that we are not aware of. We will see what information emerges.

As to who will have access to the database, there will at least be an annual report, which should be sufficient. As such, we will have ten years of data and, subsequently, we will have an annual report when the information is made available. This will allow us to identify if there have been changes.

I was probably a little harsh on Senator Conway-Walsh at the committee meeting to which she referred.