Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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80. To ask the Taoiseach the way in which the CSO acquire data on the price of motor insurance; and if staff working for the office identify themselves as a representatives of the CSO when requesting such data from a company. [8521/19]

Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Private motor insurance is one of the items measured in the monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) published by the CSO. To compile the Motor Insurance sub-index of the CPI, the CSO collects premiums information from a sample of insurance companies. The sample covers approximately two thirds of the motor insurance premiums written in the market.

The insurance companies are requested to supply price quotations for defined customer profiles for both new and existing customers. This request is made monthly via email from a member of the CSO’s CPI team directly to a representative of each of the insurance companies in the sample. As with all companies contacted directly for information used in the compilation of the CPI, the CSO team members identify themselves.

The CSO keeps the profiles regularly updated so that they continue to be representative of the private motor insurance market. Each representative profile specifies characteristics such as the model and age of the car and the sex, age, location and occupation of the insured person. The measurement is designed to explicitly exclude any changes in premium that might occur due to changes in the characteristics of the policy (e.g. changes such as a new claim in the past year, older driver, additional penalty points etc.) as the aim of the CPI is to measure the change in prices each month for exactly the same goods and services.