A chara, – Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar’s announcement that he intends to supply insurance companies with details of penalty points issued to motorists is disgraceful (“Details of driving offences to be released to insurers”, Front Page, February 4th).
If the State thinks that financial penalties should attach to various motoring offences (and I do) then it is the State and not commercial profit-making companies that should get the benefit of any such financial penalty.
The argument that this will lead to a reduction of premiums for good motorists is just so much my eye.
If the Minister were serious about this, he would establish an average insurance charge before this measure (by dividing the total number of insurees into the total amount charged for motor insurance) and make sure that this same average were maintained after the measure. But he has no plans to do any such thing, so this is just another measure to increase the profits of the insurance companies at the expense of the austerity-ridden public. – Is mise,