The average price of a home insurance premium in the Republic has gone up by 6 per cent from €466 to €494 over the last three months, according to an AA survey published today.
Prices across the State have increased, but homeowners in Dublin have fared considerably better with premiums in the capital falling by €13 over the last three months compared with the first quarter of the year.
The average price of a combined buildings and contents policy for a property in Dublin was €460 down from €473, the AA said. The price of a policy outside Dublin, meanwhile, rose to an average of €518 during the second quarter - up €27 from the €491 it would have cost during the first three months of the year.
Since the beginning of the year, the company has been tracking a fixed basket of 200 different home insurance profiles that, it says, are representative of the Irish home-owning population..
It got more than 1,800 quotes from nine different insurance providers to calculate the market average premium.
“While home insurance premiums have increased since the beginning of the year, homeowners are still getting value for money when you think of it in the context of the two consecutive bad winters we’ve had and the damage they caused to Irish homes," the director of AA Ireland Insurance, John Farrell, said.
He pointed out that in December insurers in Ireland dealt with almost 25,000 claims from private households, the majority relating to burst pipes.
“Considering the pressure this volume of claims has placed on the industry and concerns about what the coming winter has in store, I would consider last quarter’s increase to be a necessary evil".
Irish Brokers' Association chief executive Ciaran Phelan said premiums were under pressure “as a result of local losses over the last two winters and international natural disasters such as the earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand.
He said the rates of most local insurers “are influenced by the experiences of their reinsurer partners who were directly impacted by recent events throughout the globe”.
