Cost Of Claims/Legal Fees Affecting Car Insurance Premiums

The spiraling cost of car insurance is due to the rising cost of legal fees and the increasing cost of claims and it has to be tackled if many people are not to be driven out of the market altogether.
Many young people are now finding that they are being priced out of the market for car insurance following huge rises in premiums over the past couple of years. Unfortunately here in Ireland we now have a “compo culture” that is driving up the cost of premiums. It has been consistently shown that the cost of claims here is much higher than it is in other countries and we have to look at that situation. There is a standard payout for certain injuries in other countries and we will have to look at that situation for this country too. The new Government will have to address this situation seriously.
On the question of legal fees it has been shown this week that the legal profession was one of the only ones where fees did not go down during the economic crash and now those fees are increasing again and that is having a knock on effect on the cost of insurance premiums. We certainly do not want a situation where people, and especially young people cannot afford to insure their cars and if that happens we would have an increase in uninsured drivers on our roads which would be a very dangerous situation