AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Bills can induce a nasty sinking feeling can’t they? Especially insurance bills. The sums involved are large, getting bigger by the year, and, unless you have a problem, you generally don’t get anything back …. except peace of mind.
By the time you insure your health, you home and your car you will pay out somewhere between €6,000-8,000 this year. That’s if you do insure all of the above. There can be a take it or leave it element about some insurance. If I need to economise and decide not to insure my health, it’s on me if I end up having to wait years for an operation rather than being treated privately thanks to my insurance cover.
Under half of us carry health insurance (46% -48%) according to the Health Insurance Authority (HIA) and we certainly do claim: this year it’s estimated insurers will pay out €3.5Bn in rising medical costs.
Home insurance is not generally a matter of choice, if you have a mortgage you have to be insured and about 90% of us carry home insurance but there is no law against going uninsured if you own your property outright. Too bad if the roof blows off in a named storm, but only you and your home are affected. Premiums are rising due to increased building costs and to increased claims due to weather damage from floods to high winds.
Motor insurance is a different matter, though when a vehicle is not insured it affects a great many people. Not only potential accident victims are affected by lack of cover but the omission adds an extra €30 a year to everyone else’s motor insurance premiums, to cover the cost of compensation claims against uninsured motorists under the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland (MIBI) scheme.
The present car insurance system also ties up Gardai in enforcement checks to find drivers who are uninsured on our roads, about 11% of accidents involve those without cover.
One in every 15 drivers are uninsured according to MIBI. The annual cost of car insurance varies from €500-€1000 depending on the type of car, the area (Co. Kilkenny has the lowest rating,) age and profession of the driver. Those who spend most time driving like food delivery drivers or sales reps are rated the highest risk.
The cost of motor insurance could come down though, if we adopted the Continuous Vehicle Coverage ( CVC) which means that cars have to be insured from the outset of purchase and where insurance is linked to vehicle registration. Apparently 25 European countries already use this system, which makes me wonder why it has taken so long for the system to be considered in Ireland . Our neighbours in the UK saw the rate of uninsured drivers come down from 6.0% to 2.5% after the introduction of CVC.
MIBI Chief Executive David Fitzgerald said recently: “Ireland still has a very high level of uninsured vehicles on our roads despite the strong and effective work of An Garda Síochána,” adding that “progress is flat-lining and further measures are required. That’s what CVC would provide. It would reduce the pressure on the Gardaí and make enforcement against uninsured vehicles an administration-led process first.”
No prizes for guessing that, yes, our motor insurance costs more than it does for many of our EU neighbours. Reasons include the high number of claims, the rising cost of repairs, (up 9% last year) and higher pay-outs. While there is no point trying to influence things we can do nothing about – like Trump and Iran chocking the Straits of Hormuz and sending fuel prices rocketing – we can make a difference to the cost of driving by getting insurance premiums down.
Driving safely, having fewer accidents and having car insurance would bring our premiums down. Although Ireland is one of the safer EU countries for road accidents, ranking seventh recently, there were still 185 road deaths last year and 40 this year so far. The main cause of accidents ,according to the RSA is preventable behaviour like speeding and phone usage.
Most significantly taking care would save precious lives and avoid injuries but it would also save all of us money.
