The long-awaited Motor Insurance Advisory Board report challenges virtually every conviction of the Government on the issue over the last five years, the Labour Party has said.
In a Dáil speech last night, Labour TD, Mr Pat Rabbitte said the Minister of State for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Noel Treacy's approach had been negligent.
The Government has failed to establish a personal injuries tribunal, despite a recommendation to do so in 1997, which could deal with insurance claims "more quickly and more cheaply".
Mr Rabbitte said the Minister of State had "played to one gallery - the vested interests that profit from and thrive as a result of his negligence".
Congratulating the advisory board, he said: "The Minister of State has tried to hide information, to suppress analysis and to bury interim work."
The Minister of State had justified his failure to publish the board's interim report on the grounds "that there were serious deficiencies in the raw data".
The analysis included in the final document appears little different in its thrust from the analysis contained in the interim report, said Mr Rabbitte.
Now Mr Treacy had said that the report had "pulled no punches" in its view that vested interests and inefficiencies account for half of all insurance premiums.
"Where has the Minister been, what has he been doing in respect of these vested interests? He certainly has not been attending to the cause of exploited motorists, young and old," he said.
"There is profiteering on a vast scale practised by insurers in relation to young female motorists. The insurers pocketed a profit of £300 per policy year from such policy-holders.
"This compares with a profit of £16 per policy year for all policyholders over the age of 24.
"Young women account for almost half of all young insured drivers. This is a vast exploitation and most serious wrongdoing on the part of very large and very rich international corporations."
Despite charges that insuring young male drivers was unprofitable, Mr Rabbitte said the report showed that companies were making €160 a year from 17- to 24-year-olds driving on full licences.
The problems created by young males driving on probation licences could be dealt with by reforms, "but this is something this Government seem incapable of addressing."
He rejected the defence offered by the Irish Insurance Federation to the advisory board's charge that Irish insurance companies were 11 times more profitable than their UK counterparts between 1983- 1990.
Fine Gael TD Mr Denis Naughten said the thrust of the report was welcome, but it did not go far enough in dealing with the cost of insurance, especially for young drivers. "It fails to address the claims record of young drivers and the need to introduce a structural driving programme supported by the insurance industry.
"The mechanism for the review of the high cost of insurance facing young drivers proposed by the MIAB is cumbersome and it will take at least until 2005 before any action will be taken in this area.
"This is totally unacceptable to young people who have been facing astronomical prices for insurance for years", he said.