Action Plan for Insurance Reform: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-13 ============================================================ Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel I am sharing time with Senator Ní Chuilinn. I sometime feel I am like a broken record when it comes to talking about insurance. I have spoken a lot about it to the Minister of State. The message coming from businesses, community groups and voluntary organisations across Ireland is now impossible to ignore. Despite years of reform, too many people are still not seeing fairness in the insurance market. A recent report found that 62% of respondents have seen increases in their public and employer liability premiums. A total of 17% have only one insurer willing to quote them or no insurer at all. Of the respondents, 82% said they have not seen significant benefits from insurance reform. That is sad. A total of 59% have seen higher excesses, new exclusions added to their policies, or both. The reality is that premiums are rising, competition is weak, cover is shrinking and the benefits of reform are simply not reaching the people paying bills. I offer the Minister of State one very stark example, which I am sure will really surprise him. An organisation has shared figures with me showing that over a five-year period, it spent €7 million on insurance premiums, while its claims cost amounted to just €900,000. That may represent an excellent return on investment for the insurer but not for the business paying those premiums. The difference over five years was €6 million. What about the jobs, services, community activities and investment that money could have supported instead? Before we discuss what more needs to be done, it is important to acknowledge what has already been done. Over recent years, Ireland has introduced some of the most significant insurance reforms in decades. The personal injury guidelines have replaced the book of quantum, the Injuries Resolution Board has been strengthened, the national claims information database has delivered unprecedented transparency regarding claims, payments, settlements, legal costs and insurance profitability, the Garda insurance fraud co-ordination unit has been established and the law on occupiers' duty of care has been changed - a reform of which I personally am proud. Insurance reform has remained firmly on the political agenda through successive Government action plans and by way of continued engagement by Ministers, including the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, with Members of the Oireachtas. Since July 2025, we have a new insurance reform action plan, which I check once a month to see where we are at. It is a clear statement of Government intent, with more than 60 organisations from across Ireland contributing to that consultation process, alongside four political parties that are genuinely interested in reform. The political parties who contributed are Fine Gael, the Green Party, the Labour Party and the Social Democrats. That tells us something important: political parties, businesses, sports clubs, charities and community groups are all hearing the same message from people on the ground, that is, the insurance system in Ireland is not working as it should. The data show that many of the reforms are working. Claims and award levels are falling. Personal injury guidelines are being applied in a growing proportion of cases and claims through the Injuries Resolution Board are being resolved faster and with dramatically lower legal costs than cases that go through litigation. It is also important to remember why the guidelines matter in the first place. Government-commissioned research found that even after reform, average Irish awards for minor neck and back soft tissue injuries remain nearly four times higher than in England and Wales through the Injuries Resolution Board, while insurance settlements were almost five times higher. The question is no longer whether reform was necessary; it clearly was. The question now is why policyholders are still not feeling the benefit. Why are businesses still struggling with affordability? Why are community organisations still struggling to get cover? Why is competition still so weak? Why are insurers not passing on the savings generated by these reforms? This is my biggest thing. While reforms are visible in the claims data, they are not visible enough in renewal notices landing on kitchen tables and office desks around the country. This has real-world consequences. Sports clubs, community centres and local festivals are being squeezed out of activities that were once considered normal. Two weeks ago, someone contacted me to ask how they would get insurance for a bouncy castle for the village fun day. I had to say they did not have a chance. The answer effectively was that they would just not be able to do it. Last year, when helping to organise activities for a local GAA family day, insurers said that no inflatables or bouncing activities for children could be included. The very things children enjoy most are now viewed as uninsurable. That is how disconnected the market has become from ordinary community life. When we look specifically at litigation, the figures become even more alarming. Claims through the Injuries Resolution Board take approximately two years, while claims through litigation take six years. Legal costs through the Injuries Resolution Board cost €1,000. Legal costs through litigation cost €25,000. The average legal cost for claims under €150,000 now exceeds the compensation itself. This is extraordinarily difficult to justify to the public. Reducing the litigation premium must now be one of the central objectives of the next phase of insurance reform. The purpose of reform was never simply to reduce claims costs within the system, it was to improve affordability, availability and fairness to the people and the organisations who rely on insurance every single day. That means measuring success on whether business, sports clubs, charities, cultural organisations and community groups see lower premiums, better access to cover, more competition and stronger quality of cover. We now need to move decisively on the key actions in the Government's action plan. Action 3 is to strengthen the powers and remit of the Injuries Resolution Board. Action 6 is to consider and make recommendations on the scale of legal fees. Spain operates structured legal compensation scales. Germany applies regulated legal fee structures linked to claim value. France uses standardised scales across personal injury cases. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia utilise fixed-fee systems rather than openly based hourly billing. Ireland cannot continue with a system where legal costs regularly exceed compensation. We need progress on expanding the offers for more competition in the insurance market, supporting a truly functioning Europe-wide insurance market and proactively attracting international insurers into the market. There has not been a single new entrant into Ireland on public liability insurance in 11 years. This alone tells us there is something fundamentally wrong with competition in the market. What reasons are the insurers giving the Minister of State? We must continue to aggressively tackle fraud. Action 12 rightly focuses on stronger penalties and intelligence sharing between insurers and An Garda Síochána. In 2023 there were six convictions, and there were nine convictions in the first six months of 2024. I am sure there are plenty more to be investigated. The central issue remains unchanged. If reforms are reducing claims costs, reducing awards and improving efficiencies then those savings must finally start appearing in the premiums. The Minister of State said at the outset that he is committed to making a difference to insurance premiums, so let us do that. I am a little bit concerned that his opening statement already made an excuse for increases in motor insurance claims because of Iran and the things that are happening in the world. He should not let that be music to insurers' ears. I thank him for saying he is working with the thatched houses organisation, the motorcycle groups and aerial adventure companies. I am delighted that he is meeting the Alliance for Insurance Reform because until businesses, clubs and community groups feel the difference in their renewal notices, many people will continue to believe the system is working for everyone except the customer. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-13