Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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To ask the Minister for Finance his estimate of the total cost of rescuing Quinn Insurance; the consideration he has given to an inquiry into the finances of Quinn Insurance and the discharge of duties by auditors, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Financial Regulator, Patrick Neary. [38521/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The Joint Administrators of Quinn Insurance Ltd (QIL) have recently indicated to the High Court that they may have to seek up to €1.65bn from the Insurance Compensation Fund in order to fully discharge their administration obligations. It should be noted that they have qualified this by saying that for accounting reasons the projected call upon the fund now includes considerable contingencies that it is hoped will not be called upon. Consequently they believe that if they were to remove most of these accounting adjustments and use a "best estimate" calculation, then the call on the fund is likely to be in the range of €1.1bn-€1.3bn rather than the €1.65bn for which they have provided.

At this time there are no plans for an inquiry to consider the finances of Quinn Insurance. The Deputy should note that my Department has engaged extensively with the Central Bank on issues relating to the QIL administration. In June of this year I wrote to the Central Bank to express my concern about the increasing call on the ICF and to obtain the views of the Bank on the performance of the administration. In its reply the Bank indicated that it had no grounds for regulatory concerns with how the Joint Administrators have discharged their responsibilities. The Central Bank also indicated that in their opinion the Joint Administrators have undertaken a robust review in arriving at their revised estimate of the call on the Fund and that the increase in the potential call arises primarily from business written by QIL prior to the appointment of the Joint Administrators, particularly between 2007 & 2010. The work of the Joint Administrators to date confirmed the major cause of the deficit is attributable to under reserving by QIL during the period up until it was placed in administration.

The Joint Administrators have also advised me that they are currently exploring whether there is a right of legal action for professional negligence against QIL's former auditors and signing actuaries. They will report further to me on this issue in due course.