Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I apologise in advance as I must leave this debate after making my contribution. We very much welcome the Personal Injuries Resolution Board Bill 2022. All in this House are extremely conscious of the unacceptable situation that pertains to the insurance sector in this country. There is a very real problem with unaffordable premiums, and insurance firms have failed to pass on reductions. We heard other speakers talk about the fact that although the judicial guidelines have been in place for some time, we have yet to see a substantial drop in premiums. We also have a dysfunctional market.There are swaths of community groups – Senator McDowell talked about this earlier – that simply cannot secure insurance in this country anymore and are consequently put out of business. There may be but one insurance provider, if any, in the UK or beyond.

These are all issues that will not necessarily be dealt with in this Bill. Nonetheless, we very much support the Bill in the hope it will lower the cost of insurance claims and reduce premiums over the medium term. One of the key recommendations of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, of which I am a member, is that the Bill be proceeded with as quickly as possible in terms of the overall insurance reform agenda.

I want to touch on some of the concerns. The clear positives associated with the legislation have been already articulated but I want to raise some questions and concerns regarding it. The first relates to the work of the proposed mediation service, specifically its separation from the board's assessment work. At hearings of the joint committee, we heard of the need to put clear water between the mediation and assessment processes so officials involved in mediation will not be involved in assessment. However, subsections 18(d), (e) and (f), which cover the establishment of the mediation service, only require that the mediator not be involved in the assessment, or vice versa. I am conscious that there are powers delegated to the board in section 18(f) but it is not clear why clear blue water would not be put between both distinct services in the new PIRB. Arguably, there are different skill sets. I am conscious that barristers undertake both assessment and mediation the whole time, but, for consistency of assessment, it is crucial that a set number of individuals undertake the assessment work and that this work is separate from the mediation work. We heard during pre-legislative scrutiny that this would be considered. I am probably not sufficiently reassured by the text of the Bill that we are going to have the clear water between both processes.

The second issue I want to raise concerns the right to bring legal advice with an individual party to the mediation process. The availability of mediation is very welcome but typically that process involves an insurer versus an individual. There is an immediate power imbalance in that arrangement from the get-go. Once one side is lawyered up and the other is not, it reinforces the imbalance of power. Section 18(b) sets out the role of the mediator but we need to see much stronger provisions on the responsibility of the mediator towards the individual or claimant in particular. Notwithstanding that participation in mediation by the parties is voluntary, I am concerned that individuals would feel in some way implicitly coerced into participating in mediation as opposed to going straight through to the assessment. I would like to see a stronger role for the mediator with regard to a duty of care towards the claimant.

The last point I would like to make is on data collection. A lot of data are being collected at present but a key issue concerns the cases that go to PIAB that end up in the Circuit Court. I am not sure we have a full handle on the cases that progress and where PIAB fails to fully and finally resolve the claimant question. We need to understand much more about the throughput from the new PIRB, when established, to the court system. Ultimately, it is only when we see a reduction in the number going on to the courts and cases fully and finally resolved within the PIRB that we will know it has been a success. Some of the evidence concerning PIAB indicates that cases have just gone straight to the courts.