I am grateful for the opportunity to raise in the House this evening this important matter affecting thousands of our young citizens.
In ministerial reply after ministerial reply in this House, questioning Deputies have been fobbed off by the standard insurance industry mantra that the putative level of insurance costs for young drivers is a function of the claims record, especially of young male drivers, and effectively there is nothing in EU rules the Minister can do about it. The record shows that no month has passed without this issue being pressed at the relevant Question Time and the Minister doing his ritual handwashing exercise. To make matters worse, the most prominent figures in the industry have attended in sequence before the Committee on Enterprise and Small Business and defended the inordinate costs levied on young drivers by reference to their claims ratio which they said made any reduction not viable.
If The Irish Times report of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board findings is correct, the position of the industry has been at a minimum misleading and the position of the Minister of State naive and foolish. He must now tell the House why he continued to regurgitate the traditional excuse for inaction, even after he received the Motor Insurance Advisory Board preliminary report last July. The industry must explain why, although it had full knowledge of the MIAB report, its leading figures appeared before an Oireachtas Select Committee over recent months and stuck to their original position. Meanwhile tens of thousands of young people, who in most cases need a car to get to work, are expected to bear burdensome and crushing insurance costs because the testimony of the industry that it is an unprofitable enterprise is relied upon by the Minister.
It is all too tragically true that the rate of accidents among young male drivers in particular is alarmingly high. However, both the Minister of State and the industry must now explain why the MIAB has apparently concluded that young drivers are virtually the most profitable segment of the market. They must explain if it is true that young female drivers contributed on average £730 per annum per person to profitability. If those figures are accurate, the position of the industry is a disgraceful misrepresentation of the true position. The recklessness and appalling record of some young male drivers ought not be allowed distort the fact that tens of thousands of responsible young drivers are being punished on the fraudulent basis that they constitute an inherent loss making segment of the market.
This is a very significant issue of public interest. Some young people are expected to pay more for annual insurance cover than they paid for the motor vehicle being insured. If the MIAB report is borne out, they are victims of grave misrepresentation by the industry in which the Minister of State, knowingly or otherwise, is complicit. This revelation is reminiscent of the discovery a few years ago that in their annual presentation of the Blue Book the industry conveniently excluded reference to investment income. It is now time for a detailed examination of practices in the industry and for immediate alleviation of the burdens unfairly imposed on young drivers.
It is especially regrettable that, in his remarks on the Order of Business today, the Taoiseach lapsed into the old waffle that the figures are in dispute and came out essentially on the side of the industry. Nor did he make any attempt to explain why his Minister sat on the draft report since last July while the members of the Oireachtas committee were made fools of by the industry. He might have explained why the Personal Injuries Tribunal report initiative, which he today confused with the MIAB report, has taken almost four years to win the approval of his reluctant Minister who, it must be said, has never shown that the consumers, young or old, are his first priority.