Brennan on verge of deal linking car insurance to penalties

The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, said yesterday that he expects to sign a deal with at least one insurance company by June 1st, if the Insurance Industry Federation (IIF) fails to offer substantive discounts to motorists who avoid penalty points for a 12-month period.

Mr Brennan, who admitted to being "disappointed, frustrated and annoyed" after the failure of recent negotiations with the IIF, said a major insurance company had offered to pass on discounts to safe drivers, in return for access to the State's register of drivers' penalty points.

The Minister said he would prefer a deal with the entire insurance industry but "the worst position is that by June 1st, we will have a deal with at least one company".

The move comes after the IIF said any discounts it could offer to safe drivers in return for information on penalty point holders would be minor.

The industry told the Minister that additional revenue gained from increasing premiums to risky drivers, when divided by the number of good drivers, did not result in discounts of anything like the hoped-for figure of 15 per cent. It calculated the discounts for clean drivers would be about €3.29 per policy.

However, Mr Brennan accused the IIF of failing to consider the savings made in the reduction in deaths and serious injuries on the State's roads since penalty points were introduced.

He accused the industry of "completely missing the point" and of "hanging back" on the campaign to improve road safety.

Speaking to The Irish Times last night, Mr Brennan calculated that the industry had saved between €20 million and €40 million because road deaths had dropped by 32 per cent since the introduction of penalty points last October, with corresponding reductions in serious injuries.

The Minister said it was "not acceptable" that the industry had adopted a wait-and-see approach to "the most successful scheme ever applied to reducing road deaths and serious injuries".

"We need to say to a driver that if you don't accumulate points over a 12-month period your insurance will fall by a certain amount.

"The industry seems to be hanging back and saying, we will wait and see if the points system works. It is not acceptable," said Mr Brennan.

He confirmed that parallel negotiations are continuing between his Department and a major insurance company to allow it access to the penalty points register.

The company, which has not been named, approached the Department with firm proposals to reduce premiums in return for access to the register.

"The deadline for this is June 1st when we will introduce a new penalty points offence of five points for not having insurance. By then we will, at worst, have a deal with one company," he said.

Mr Brennan is of the view that once one company starts to offer discounts, based on access to the register, market forces will ensure that other companies follow suit. However, his views on savings to the industry have been flatly rejected by the IIF.

According to the federation's spokesman, Mr Martin Long, "the policy of returning in full the benefits is not at issue". He insisted that the only item at issue was the value of those benefits which he said was "not at all anything like 15 percent".

Mr Long said the industry had implemented every aspect of its obligations under the recommendations of the recent Dowling report.

However, the Government had as yet to fully introduce the points system, establish the Garda traffic corps, or set up the personal injuries assessment board.