The group set up to advise on how to implement the recommendations of the Motor Insurance Advisory Group, will report back to the Government in July.
This could determine how "urgently" the Government will make good on its promise in the programme agreed by Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, to "implement urgently" the board's 67 recommendations.
In April its 750-page report found that Irish motor insurance companies made 10 times the profits of their UK counterparts, over a 17 year period and that litigation costs added 40 per cent to every €1 paid in compensation for injury sustained in motor accidents. The recommendations are aimed at bringing down the high cost of motor insurance premiums. They include stiffer penalties, including confiscation of vehicles, for those driving without insurance and stringent measures to tackle fraudulent and exaggerated claims.
The Minister of State with responsibility for the issue, Mr Noel Treacy, established the implementation group when the board's report was published. Its membership included the board's chairwoman Ms Dorothea Dowling, who yesterday said she was "pleasantly surprised" at the commitment to urgently implement the board's recommendations. She told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland it was "the first time ever perhaps that we have a Government prepared to tackle the vested interests that force us to pay twice what we need" for motor insurance. It marked the end of "self-regulation for the insurance industry".
