I want to raise the issue of car insurance. We have brought up lots of different insurance issues in this House and I know there was a briefing yesterday in the audiovisual room, which I missed, but I am well aware of the issues involving motor insurance. In many of our towns and villages in rural Ireland, having a car is not a luxury; it is essential. To take children to school, to get to appointments and to get to work, a person needs to have a car and has to drive. The fact that insurance costs are going up seems to be disproportionately unfair on people in rural Ireland.

My own car insurance was up for renewal this month. Luckily, I have a broker and got a letter last month saying my car insurance this year was going to be €550. I said "not a chance", considering that last year I paid €450, so I went online, shopped around and got it down to €420. However, the day and the month got away from me and I completely forgot to take it at the lower price. When I checked online again the day before the deadline, the lowest price I could get was €890. It just goes to show that there was an option to get it cheaper but when they knew I was desperate to get my car insurance by the following day, the price jumped. That is not fair. There is definitely something wrong with the system and it needs to be sorted. Luckily, I had the back-up of my broker, so I could ring up and say, "Oh yeah, I'll take that insurance premium", but I had to pay €100 more than I paid last year, with no claims on my insurance policy.

Claims have gone down, the laws are in place and the payouts are smaller, so why is the cost of insurance policies increasing every single year? My party colleague Deputy Doherty submitted a Bill last year that was shot down. We need reform of insurance companies. We need to see exactly what their profits are and we need to see their rationale for what premium goes. My own broker told me that for someone living at one end of the village of Athea, it could be €400 while for someone living at the other end, which is only probably a quarter of a mile away, it could be €800. Where do they get the rationale for these premiums? It is quite unfair to see the costs going up by so much and the payouts going down when we are not seeing the benefit. We need to have a debate in the House to see whether we can get to the bottom of why these insurance companies are not being held to account.