Joe Carey (Clare, Fine Gael)
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153. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality his plans to address fraudulent or exaggerated insurance claims as they apply to small business; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28260/18]

Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will be aware that the Cost of Insurance Working Group was established by the Minister for Finance in July 2016. A significant factor in the rising cost of insurance, identified in both the first and second reports of the Working Group (on (i) motor insurance and (ii) employer's liability/public liability respectively), is the impact of fraudulent insurance claims. As such, the reports include a number of recommendations relating to insurance fraud.

An initial roundtable was convened by the Department of Finance in late 2017 to listen to the views of all of the key stakeholders in relation to insurance fraud. Additional fraud roundtable sessions have been convened this year to progress a number of specific recommendations contained in the Working Group’s ‘Report on the Cost of Employer and Public Liability Insurance’, published in January this year. Recommendations 11 and 12 of the report relate to the production of statistics by An Garda Síochána and the Courts Service on complaints, investigations, prosecutions and convictions relating to fraud within the personal injuries area. My Department has liaised with the Garda authorities in relation to the production of these statistics, and I am informed that the necessary Pulse update is anticipated to be in place by the end of June 2018.

Recommendation 13 of the same report recommends that Insurance Ireland, An Garda Síochána and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions agree a set of guidelines in respect of the reporting of suspected fraudulent insurance claims. While guidelines were published in 2004, the Working Group noted that these have only been used to a very limited extent over the years and proposed that a new set of guidelines should be developed, using the 2004 protocol as a starting point.

In line with the intention to use the existing guidelines to inform the drafting of new, fit for purpose guidelines, An Garda Síochána produced a draft document which was communicated to Insurance Ireland. The draft document proposed a number of changes to the section of the existing guidelines concerning the station or section within An Garda Síochána to which a formal complaint should be made. Insurance Ireland signalled its agreement with the changes proposed at the roundtable session of 26 March. It was agreed that further consultations with stakeholders regarding the proposed guidelines would take place, including with insurance providers not represented by Insurance Ireland; two such consultations have already been held and the next meeting of the Roundtable, scheduled for later this week (29 June 2018), will aim to finalise the new guidelines in the context of the feedback received in these consultations. Agreement on the new set of guidelines is expected to be completed on time in Quarter 3 2018.

The fraud roundtable process also intends to examine the follow-on procedure in circumstances where fraud or exaggeration is identified in court or acknowledged by a judge. Recommendation 12 of the Working Group’s ‘Report on the Cost of Employer and Public Liability Insurance’ proposes that where an application under Section 26 of the Civil Liability Act 2004 is successful, this fact should be communicated to An Garda Síochána by the Courts Service. I understand that the fraud roundtable is currently engaging with the Courts Service in this regard.

The Deputy may be interested to note that the Department of Finance issues regular quarterly updates on its website in relation to the implementation of the respective reports of the Cost of Insurance Working Group, the latest (fifth) of which was published on 11 May 2018; the quarterly progress update for Quarter 2 will be published next month and will refer to the current status of all the recommendations from both reports.