Motorists who have received their motor insurance renewal notices in the post in recent months have got quite a shock, with dramatic increases in the premiums being charged by insurance companies. In the past year premiums have gone up by 30% or more in some cases. On top of this, the insurers' representative body, Insurance Ireland, is predicting that motor insurance premiums are likely to increase by a further 25% next year. This means, for example, that a person with a premium of €400 per annum last year could be facing a premium of €650 or more next year. Many motorists are now facing an increase of between €250 and €300 per year. These increases are simply unsustainable as I am sure the Tánaiste will agree. They are placing increasing pressure on household budgets and on businesses, particularly those which depend on motor fleets to conduct their business. Evidence suggests that younger drivers and drivers with older cars are being particularly hard hit by these premium increases.

Motor insurance premiums are increasing for a variety of reasons, including an increase in the number and cost of claims as well as a rise in the number of fraudulent claims. There is a lack of transparency around the way that many claims are being settled and the true financial performance of individual insurance firms in Ireland. It is remarkable that seven out of ten claims are settled by insurance companies without going to court and there is no register kept on the overall cost of those claims. There is a complete lack of information which is necessary if we are to get a proper handle on this situation.

The €1 billion plus bailout of Quinn Insurance and the collapse of Setanta Insurance has brought into sharp focus the need for the insurance sector to be properly regulated to ensure that firms are making proper provision for future claim liabilities. We have been here before. In the late 1990s, at a time when motor insurance premiums were spiralling, the Motor Insurance Advisory Board was set up. It issued its first report in April 2002, with 67 recommendations. The implementation of many of those recommendations, including the setting up of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, led directly to six successive years in which premiums were reduced.

I am calling for the Motor Insurance Advisory Board to be re-established in order that we can have an independent examination of why premiums are increasing at the current unsustainable rate. The board would need to examine a range of issues, including how claims are settled, the true financial position of insurance companies in Ireland and the need for judicial guidelines to be introduced to bring greater consistency to awards. It should also review the operation of the PIAB and the role of the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland and the Insurance Compensation Fund when individual insurance companies get into difficulty. The Consumers' Association of Ireland has also called for the re-establishment of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board and I hope the Tánaiste will accede to this call today so that we can get an independent assessment of why motor insurance premiums have gone through the roof and are likely to increase even further in the coming years. We have been here before and I hope we have learned some lessons from experience.

I thank the Deputy for raising an issue which is important for many people. Anyone who owns a car is aware of the pressure from insurance companies in terms of rising premiums. That said, this is happening at a time when fuel prices have fallen substantially. In many cases, for example, people going back to work who are commuting in the greater Dublin area, notwithstanding the pressure caused by increased traffic volumes, have found that the overall cost of motoring has not risen substantially due to the significant reduction in the price of diesel and petrol. I am sure the Deputy has taken that into account.

What does that have to do with insurance premiums?

There are several factors which explain the rise in motor insurance premiums, one of which emanated from the European Union a number of years ago and involved the equalisation of charges for female and male drivers. As Deputy Michael McGrath will know, that equalisation process worked to the advantage of younger male drivers who tend, unfortunately, to feature more often in accident statistics. At the same time, a lot of women who had very safe, careful and claim-free driving histories ended up on the wrong side of the process. It could be argued that the equalisation process drove a general trend of price changes which contributed to the upward pressure on premiums.

The PIAB has been a significant force in settlements being reached which do not involve lengthy court cases. I am not sure if the statistics prove that the number of fraudulent claims has risen but there have certainly been a number of court cases where Facebook and other social media evidence was used to dismiss claims. In some cases, people had apparently suffered severe injuries but when their social media activity was shared with the court, some of them appeared to be extraordinarily fit and well and to have fully recovered from any injuries they may have sustained in accidents. In other instances it appears that accidents were pre-arranged. I am not sure whether such cases are indicative of an overall increase in fraudulent insurance claims and it is not clear whether Deputy Michael McGrath has evidence to back up his contention in that regard. It must be said, however, that the courts take such cases very seriously.

I have an open mind on the question of the re-establishment of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board. However, that mechanism was used quite a long time ago and the industry has changed considerably since.

There have been a lot more amalgamations and mergers and the industry is much more concentrated among a few players. There are also far fewer brokers than would have been the case at the time it was originally established and many people would have used brokers in shopping around for the best price. The difficulty nowadays is that a lot of best-price shopping is done online and, sometimes, the variations in the different online offers make it extremely difficult to work out the best price. While I do not have a particular problem with the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, it would be appropriate for the Dáil committee that covers this area to have a discussion on this issue with a view to scoping out the factors which lead to change and undertaking research into the impacts. The Deputy talked about younger drivers. The problem with them, from an insurance point of view, is that, unfortunately for themselves and the industry, they have a higher rate of accidents and, therefore, a higher risk. That is why they are bearing the brunt. The appropriate Dáil committee would be the venue to have this issue scoped and examined, with a view to bringing forward a modern mechanism for more up-to-date regulation which reflects the online nature of much of the industry nowadays, as opposed to what it was when the original board was established.

For somebody receiving a motor insurance renewal premium notice today showing an increase of €150 or €200, burying this issue in a Dáil committee is not a satisfactory answer. The truth of the matter is that we have been here before. The establishment of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board which examined independently the reasons premiums were rising so significantly in the late 1990s and early 2000s led to a series of recommendations which, when implemented, directly resulted in insurance premiums falling. The Tánaiste has raised a number of issues that essentially are irrelevant to this debate, including falling fuel prices. It is of little consolation to somebody who receives his or her motor insurance renewal notice in the post to see that the price of diesel on the nearest forecourt is down by a few cent. That is not the issue. Similarly, the changes introduced at EU level are not the reason insurance premiums have gone through the roof.

The Deputy is not familiar with the views of women on this issue.

The reality is that it does not explain the issue about which we are talking. The industry will state it is caused essentially by the rising cost of claims, but we do not have a handle on that issue because seven out of ten claims are settled outside the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, and a court environment. Therefore, we do not have the published records and, in the absence of that information, it is very difficult to reach any definitive conclusion as to why the cost of premiums is escalating at its current rate. The bottom line for motorists watching at home who have received their renewal notices in the post or who are expecting to receive them in the next few months is that they are looking at increases of hundreds of euro. Shopping around is not the answer. People are doing this and finding that the quotations from all other firms have gone up correspondingly and that there is no saving to be achieved. The Minister for Finance raised the issue of the insurance sector generally with the Central Bank. The then Governor, Mr. Honohan, wrote to the Minister in August, to make a series of recommendations, including the introduction of judicial guidelines for when cases get to court in order that there would a degree of consistency in the level of court awards made.

The Tánaiste would be doing consumers a service if, today in the House, she committed to re-establishing the Motor Insurance Advisory Board in order that it could sit down with all stakeholders to get a handle on the true facts and arrive at an understanding of what is driving the unsustainable level of increase in motor insurance premiums. I cannot for the life of me see why she would have a problem with this. Why would she not immediately commit to re-establishing the advisory board in order that we could identify the recommendations which would make a real impact on the money in the pockets of consumers? The increase was 30% last year and the industry is predicting a further increase of 25% next year. This means that a bill of €400 will increase to €650 or €700, which is not sustainable. There are issues driving the increase which could be dealt with by way of legislation and other initiatives. Let us deal with it. Let us get the Motor Insurance Advisory Board back up and running in order that it could start to examine this issue quickly, not just refer it to another Dáil committee which, as the Tánaiste knows, would not have time to deal with it before the general election.

We should reflect before we re-establish another entity which was in place in different times before the industry changed dramatically. By the way, the Deputy would not dismiss the higher insurance premiums charged to women out of hand if he was a woman looking at her insurance bill.

That is not driving the increase.

The Deputy did not dismiss it.

The Tánaiste is trying to divide us.

Order, please.

Deputy Michael McGrath needs to talk to some of the women in his life who will tell him about it. Let me tell him: it is a very sore point.

The Deputy is saying the insurance companies are overcharging for motor insurance cover and that he wants to see motor insurance premiums come down. I have no difficulty in agreeing with him. He is his party's finance spokesperson. We provided for regulation, both prudential regulation and the regulation of the insurance industry, including motor insurance, within the Central Bank. At the last count, it was employing in or around 1,400 people, or it proposes to employ that number. Let us be reasonable about this. Some very fine studies have been carried out by the bands of economists who work on our behalf in the Central Bank. It is possible to arrange to have a study carried out to find out what the issues for the motor insurance industry are-----

That is what I suggested.

-----before we set up what the Deputy is proposing which, effectively, would be a quango. I do not have a problem with-----

It would not be a quango.

The PIAB, for instance, has done very good work, which I acknowledge, in cutting the cost of claims and keeping them out of court. However, with all of the people working in the Central Bank, we should be able, through the members of the finance committee, to receive a detailed report from the Central Bank-----

The Tánaiste is passing the buck; that is all she is doing.

I am sorry, but the Central Bank is the regulator in terms of both prudential regulation and the regulation of the insurance industry in general.

They are doing a great job.

They have all of the figures. I will write to the new Governor of the Central Bank to say this is a very important consumer issue.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, has already done that.

The Deputy talked about something slightly different in the case of the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan. I am perfectly happy to and will write to the new Governor who only took up office two weeks ago to ask him, given that he has a lot of economists working for him, to undertake a detailed review of the matter, as the Central Bank has done in a series of other areas in quarterly reports that are published in the Central Bank's bulletin. We will receive that report and then make a decision on whether another new board is needed or whether an old one needs to be re-established.

We also have to take account of the current online nature of the insurance industry. On a final point, shopping around for insurance, even in a time of higher premiums, does pay.

One might save a fiver.

The Deputy should not say to consumers that they should not shop around.

I did not say that.