Matt Shanahan urges overhaul of dysfunctional insurance market

I want to thank your officials for the behind the scenes engagement over continuing recruitment nominees for our cardiology services at UHW. Hopefully there will be no further snafus on building on your promise to the people of the South East. I think fair to say we had all better keep a beady eye on the delivery of these future approved appointments. Anyway, with that in hand, for the moment, it allows me to use my time to address an issue of national importance, that being our dysfunctional insurance market. Insurance, the contributions of the many for the losses of the few, is supposed to make our society more resilient. Our Minister for Health was not wrong when he observed that the things we do in life, like playing sport or throwing a child onto a trampoline, that inherently carry a risk, and we have got to manage that risk. Increasingly, Teachta, commercial business, not-for-profits, schools, government itself and families are finding it hard, and they can do less in life because insurance is not working. This is deja vu from 20 years ago. Occupiers' liability remains extraordinarily onerous. If it happens on your premises, you are to blame, irrespective of the circumstances. Despite it being in the Justice Action Plan, nothing has happened on the reform of occupiers' liability. The ink is barely dry, Taoiseach, on the PIGC award levels, and they are already being circumvented. There appears to be no implications for making persistent nuisance claims or even downright fraudulent claims. Cases take too long and take too much out of the people involved in them. Simply put, insurance costs too much, and for many is becoming impossible to obtain at any reasonable economic costs. Indeed, what is becoming a parasitical insurance, medical, legal industry crushes the social, cultural and economic vitality of our society. No surprise there, Teachta, that honeypot crushed the troika back in the day. It is surely time now, Teachta, to grab the nettle and stop tinkering with tort reform, but actually replace tort compensation with a sturdy social security framework that serves victims without respect to cause or fault. Tort reform was legislated for in Australia a decade ago, Taoiseach, and has delivered for that society. We must do something similar in Ireland. First of all, I want to thank the Deputy Farhees. I know his comments in relation to the cardiac situation in Waterford, which we will continue to pursue vigorously and consciously. Jason Toomey is another Waterford Deputy and Minister who is advocating strongly for that. In terms of insurance reform, I think your comments I would have a lot of sympathy with in terms of the impact of insurance costs on employment, on business and on enterprise, and that is why it is a key priority for the Government. And the action plan for insurance reform was published in December 2020. It sets out 66 actions to bring down costs for consumers and businesses, introduce more competition into the market, prevent fraud and reduce the burden on enterprises, community and voluntary organisations. 95% of the actions are due to be completed by the end of 2021. And the first action plan implementation report published in July shows that tangible progress indeed has been made. The introduction of new personal injury guidelines is one. Early data from PIAB demonstrates that award levels have declined by an average of 40%. I take your point. We need to see that translated into premium reductions. The establishment of the office to promote competition in the insurance market share by the Minister of State, Sean Fleming, who I think is doing exceptional work on this topic. The criminal justice perjury and related offices bill passed all stages on the 15th of June. This will make perjury an offence for the first time we will therefore help tackle insurance fraud. And then the establishment of the insurance fraud coordination office within the Scottish economy. You have identified the issue around occupiers liability. You know that the Department of Justice has recently completed a review of the Occupiers Liability Act, including the duty of care and notices and waivers, and the Minister for Justice has noted to government the intention to bring forward legislative proposals to reform the law in this area. Those proposals are at a very advanced stage, and Minister McEntee has indicated that the heads of the relevant amendments have been drafted and advice has been sought from the Office of the Attorney General. The planned rebalancing of the duty of care with a view to applying a common sense approach to risk is of particular relevance to leisure and high footfall activities, as it will help to address the so-called slips and trips and falls. Minister Troy is progressing development of a general scheme, legislative amendments to increase the number of cases which are settled by PIAB without recourse to litigation, and he is working in consultation with the Attorney General in relation to the reform of PIAB and legislative reforms in that regard. So there is a comprehensive programme of action underway. The issue will be, as those reforms are implemented and give an effect to, can we translate those reforms? We need to ensure the translation of those reforms into reduced costs for people out there, households, community groups, voluntary groups and businesses. Thank you. Deputy Shannon. Thank you, Chair. Taoiseach insurance is not working. As you know, it is becoming unaffordable, and actually it is becoming unavailable for a significant number of sectors in the country now. Many have only recourse to one underwriter, and they have to pay whatever is being asked of them. You have mentioned PIAB-TSHIP, and you know that PIAB claims are being circumvented with the attachment of post-traumatic stress to soft tissue injuries. That was never meant to be where we were going in terms of the PIGC. There has been no attachment of costs, TSHIP, to solicitors' practice who are bringing nuisance cases. I have not seen any. In fact, there was one high-profile case recently where the judge explicitly refused to do it in relation to GAA insurance. The insurance companies are not settling. They are settling low-pay costs simply because they do not want to go into the High Court, and even where they are getting awards, they cannot recover the costs from the other side. This is leading to this large level of dysfunction. When you talk about claims of falling TSHIP, what you are really talking about is the motor insurance industry. That is the only heading where insurance claims at the moment appear to be falling, and where the premiums are falling. They are not falling anywhere else. I have a friend at the moment who is in the sports amenity business, and he is facing a claim at the minute for somebody who broke through a fence, came into the property at night, injured themselves, and now he is facing a personal injuries claim as an occupier. Unfortunately, this is endemic across the country. If you look at where the courts are going, it is being supported, unfortunately, by many in the legal profession, and I think we are going to have to legislate again TSHIP and properly for insurance reform beyond what we are doing. Again, I thank the Deputy for raising what is a very important issue for people, and it is part of a wider agenda within Government to reduce costs for people in their ordinary lives, and insurance is a very significant cost, whether you are in a household, motoring, or whether in a business, and you are correct to point to the reduction in motor insurance. This morning the Government again adopted a very significant road safety strategy for the next number of years, and it is interesting, when you look back, the number of people who died on our roads 20 years ago compared to now is stark. In other words, far less now. I think it is something like, I could stand corrected, 450 per annum to maybe 150 now, which is still too many, but it is what good strategies and good reforms can achieve. And I can recall the howling in the House at the time, when the then Minister was introducing drink driving laws and so on, and deputies were opposing, it was Noel Dempsey at the time, I think, and Gerberne headed up to the late Gerberne headed up to RSA, but the results are there to be seen now, in reduced road fatalities and accidents. So strategies work. The agenda we have for insurance reform is very comprehensive, and I think this agenda will work, but we do have to keep the focus on and make sure it works and it translates into reduced costs. All right. You