Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome these amendments. I appreciate that while it is not ideal there has been an urgency and a speed to ensure this is on a proper statutory footing as quickly as possible.

I echo the sentiments of all the other speakers that there needs to be a quid pro quo, which was very eloquently put by Senator Bacik. We need that. I had my own experience last week in getting a quote for car insurance from a broker that I have used for the past three years. I decided I would shop around and do the novel thing. The Seanad was not sitting last week so I had a little bit of time. My first quote was for just over €600. The lowest quote I got was for just over €300, which is nearly half. When I went behind the second broker it was exactly the same insurance company that was quoting on both occasions.Something is going on that is not based on personal injuries alone, it is also based on the transparency of insurance companies in quoting for insurance because that is scandalous. I have printed out both and sent them off to the insurance company in question because it is scandalous that it could quote me exactly the same insurance in two different guises, one half the price of the other. That is not down to personal injuries. It is down to profiteering on the basis that people do not have that momentum to move or to shop around, and they tend to just renew what they have. In that regard, we need to hold out and we need to keep the pressure on.

It is good that we have both Ministers here, the Minister with responsibility for implementing this personal injuries aspect, with insurance in the background behind that, and also the Minister with responsibility for children. At the moment, we have a crisis in childcare insurance and the childcare companies are being hit with massive increases in their bills this year. I know that is nothing new and has been going on for the last 18 months, but it is something we need to address. There are no better people than the two Ministers to address it.