The body set up to advise the Government on Irish motor insurance costs has been critical of some Departments for not implementing all its 67 recommendations.
In the Motor Insurance Advisory Body's (MIAB) report for 2004 - the last it will make before it's role is taken up by Ifsra - the Department of Health comes in for criticism for failing to abolish discriminatory charges on victims of road traffic accidents.
The body is also critical of the failure by both the insurance companies and those in the legal profession to have transparency in their costs.
The Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment, Mr Martin, said today it was a "major achievement" that 52 of the 67 recommendations had been "fully/partially implemented." Only 15 of the recommendations have been fully implemented. The Department of Transport has failed to fully implement any of the seven recommendations made to it.
In a letter to the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment, chairwoman of the MIAB, Ms Dorothea Dowling said: "Findings by the Competition Authority on solicitors' non-compliance with requirements to give clients early estimates of costs, coupled with concerns expressed by the Consumers Association of Ireland about unrepresented complainants facing their former solicitors in oral hearings of the Disciplinary Tribunal, on top of complaints of double charging referred to in this report, add weight to other public calls for an independent Legal Services Ombudsman".
Ms Dowling was also critical of the fact that those seeking to take out or renew an insurance policy can't get a breakdown of the costs of their insurance premium, particularly, when the premium if being increased from a previous year.
"One simple outstanding measure on which unacceptably slow progress has been made is the unbundling of charges by standardisation of renewal notices, including showing the intermediaries' commission, as sought by recommendation number 15 originally addressed to IIF but which now falls to IFSRA.
"The regulation requiring fifteen days advance notice and "NCD" certificate, which you introduced in November 2002, has greatly assisted private policyholders in securing cheaper quotations. Improved transparency would secure them even better deals," Ms Dowling added.
She also expressed alarm at 850 cases of children not wearing seat belts in the front or back of the car.
"Extraordinarily, among the 10,000 penalty points notices issued for non-wearing of seat belts, 850 related to unrestrained children in the front and rear of the vehicle. Compliance by adults with this safety feature might be encouraged if minimum deductions of 25% were made from their injury compensation rather than the onus of causative proof resting on a defendant," said Ms Dowling.
A new issue identified is the level of drug use detected in blood samples analysed for alcohol levels. Professor Denis Cusack, Head of Forensic Medicine at UCD, described the trend over two years of increased detection of cocaine as "dramatic". It presents an additional challenge for safety both on the road and in the workplace, he said.