The report on insurance reform produced by the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business has highlighted once again the problems in the Irish insurance market.
But it has achieved little else other than reheat a number of existing policy proposals and stoke unrealistic expectations of dramatic falls in insurance premiums.
One only has to look at the report of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, published a little over a year ago, to get a sense of how stale are the bulk of the committee's recommendations. The MIAB held out the prospect of a 30 per cent reduction in motor premiums if a number of key reforms were implemented. Although made in the context of motor insurance, the reforms would have had an equal, if not greater, impact on other areas of insurance, such as public liability.
The bulk of the reforms currently remain in limbo, with the exception of the penalty points scheme implemented against considerable opposition by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan. The other major reforms - the introduction of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board and reform of the court process - have yet to come to fruition. Another MIAB proposal - the abolition of the two per cent levy on insurance policies - was flatly rejected by the Minster for Finance ahead of last year's budget.
All three of these issues feature high on the list of reforms that Mr Donnie Cassidy, the committee chairman, and his colleagues believe will deliver reduced premiums within two years.
Such optimism seems misguided. As members of the Oireachtas - and having had the opportunity to question both the Tánaiste and the Minster for Justice during the course of their inquiry - the committee members must be well aware of the problems to be surmounted before these reforms can be implemented.
Equally they must realise how torturously slow is the legislative process that must be gone through to bring the PIAB into effect, never mind significantly reform the court system to bring down the cost of processing claims. Equally, if they paid even scant attention to comments of the Minister for Finance they would know there is little chance of him abolishing the levy this year given that it brings in around €65 million to the exchequer.
Against this background, talk of a 30 per cent reduction in insurance premiums over two years seems more than a little naive, if not actually misleading. But all the signs are that the committee plans to continue its efforts when the Oireachtas returns in the autumn, not least because of the limelight its public hearings shed on otherwise obscure backbenchers.
Their efforts will, at least, provide some incentive for the Government to implement the reforms already on the agenda. The insurance issue has been identified correctly as a major problem facing businesses and consumers. It will fall to the committee to look further and more deeply at possible reforms when they return to the matter.