Car insurance premiums to jump by further 25%, industry warns
Increases will see motorists paying €300 per year more for than in 2014
Motorists are set to pay around €300 per year more for a comprehensive policy in 2016 than they did in 2014.
Motorists are to be hit with premium hikes of around 25 per cent next year, the chief executive of the group which represents the vast majority of car insurance companies has warned.
The increases will come on the back of similar price hikes this year and will see most motorists paying around €300 per year more for a comprehensive policy in 2016 than they did in 2014.
Kevin Thompson, the chief executive of Insurance Ireland, which represents 95 per cent of the domestic and international based insurance sector in Ireland, denied that mismanagement across the motor insurance sector was to blame for the price spikes.
He accepted that competition had driven premiums below sustainable levels in recent years but insisted factors outside the control of the sector were to blame for premiums increasing.
He said the high cost of awards in court was a key factor driving up the cost of insurance premiums. Other factors include legal costs, fraud and most recently, the High Court’s judgment in relation to Setanta Insurance.
Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Thompson said the premium increases were inevitable because the motor insurance sector has been losing money for more than five years. He said the net underwriting loss between 2010 and 2014 was €585 million with in motor insurance sector reporting losses of €242 million last year alone.
“From any business model perspective it is just not sustainable,” he said. “We are into a cycle where there is only going to be serious upward pressure on prices. It is not good news for consumers.
Insurance Ireland believes a range of measures are needed to stabilise pricing for consumers, particularly in the area of motor premiums.
“Motor claims costs are rising. The level of awards being made in the courts is at an all-time high. The average High Court award in 2014 was up 34 per cent on 2013 and the average Circuit Court award was up 14 per cent on 2013,” Mr Thompson said. “ In litigated cases, legal costs in Ireland account for more than 60 per cent of the compensation awarded.”
All told 80 per cent of motor injury claims in the Republic are for whiplash, Mr Thompson said and he described the payouts associated with such claims as being out of step with EU norms. “The figures on whiplash alone are very stark,” he said. “In Ireland the average award for whiplash is €15,000, in the UK, the corresponding figure is €5,000.” In Spain and Italy the average payout for such a claim is around €2,000.
“ The reality is that premiums are dictated by claims costs, and although the Irish market is very competitive, increases in the cost of claims will inevitably lead to increases in premiums,” he said.
Mr Thompson stopped short of criticising the Injuries Board which handles around 20 per cent of the motor insurance claims. It was set up a decade ago to reduce the legal costs associated with claims and speed up the process.
However Mr Thompson pointed out that “the average motor injury award made by the Injuries Board is very high at around €21,000. Also, more than 90 per cent of claimants to the Injuries Board are represented by solicitors even though the Injuries Board was meant to be a lawyer free zone.”
He said around 40 per cent of Injuries Board awards were rejected by claimants “partly because some solicitors adopt a policy of non-cooperation, for example claimants not turning up for medicals or not supplying loss of earnings information so that the Injuries Board cannot make informed awards. The consequence of this is that following the inevitable rejection of the award, the case is subsequently litigated, generating additional legal costs.”
Mr Thompson said insurance fraud added a further €100m per annum to overall motor insurance costs which equates to €50 per annum on the average motor premium.
He also highlighted the recent ruling on Setanta Ireland which found that the industry funded Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland was liable to cover the costs most claims motorists insured by the now insolvent company. “While everyone agrees that those injured by Setanta drivers should be compensated, Insurance Ireland believes the [STATE-FUNDED]Insurance Compensation Fund is the right mechanism to do this,” he said.
He said that by the middle of this year the cost of Setanta claims had reached €90m and was likely to rise. “Imposing the responsibility for this on the rest of the sector through the MIBI will result in higher premiums and potentially a risk of insurers exiting the Irish market.”
Employment growth in Ireland now fastest in the EU zone
Eurostat figures show employment fell here by 3% in the 12 months up to June
Eurostat figures show employment here grew by 3% during the period, Employment grew faster in Ireland in the 12 months to June than in any other EU state.
Eurostat figures show employment here grew by 3% during the period, marginally ahead of the EU’s next best performers, Spain at 2.9% and Luxembourg at 2.5 %.
• Across the EU as a whole, employment grew by just 0.9%.
Ireland’s economy is also forecast to be the fastest growing in the EU this year, with gross domestic product expected to expand by close to 6%.
Overall, the employment situation in the EU is slowly improving but some countries, like Ireland, are performing much more strongly than others.
The latest figures show Ireland also exhibited strong jobs growth in the second quarter of this year, with employment growing by 0.9 p%, placing it in the top four best performing states.
Pancreatic cancer treatments: US-Ireland research partnership takes novel approach
UB pharmaceutical scientist leads international, $3.8 million grant to develop personalized, nanoparticle drug-delivery systems for pancreatic cancer
“If we capture the time course and magnitude of how an agent affects the tumor, then we can use mathematical simulation to identify the optimal timing for priming and delivery of the drug.”
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers: in the United States, only 7% of patients survive five years after diagnosis.
Drugs cannot easily access pancreatic tumors because the tumors have very low blood supply and secrete certain proteins that promote the growth of stroma, collagenous connective tissue that hinders drugs’ access to tumors.
Recent research has identified drug pre-treatments that boost delivery of conventional small-molecule drugs into the tumors by making their blood vessels more leaky.
But now an international partnership led by the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences is embarking on research based on a somewhat different principle. Since many of the pharmaceutical agents being studied in this grant already have Food and Drug Administration approval, the strategy, if proven successful, could have a rapid impact on treating pancreatic cancer, the researchers say.
The five-year, $3.8 million, grant started Sept. 1. Funding was received through the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme, a unique funding mechanism that supports projects across the U.S., the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with each country funding the research performed within its borders.
Under this grant, UB’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) will share $2.2 million from the National Institutes of Health, while collaborators at Queens University, Belfast, will receive the equivalent of $1.13 million from the UK Health and Social Care R&D Division and collaborators at Dublin City University will receive the equivalent of $506,000 from Science Foundation Ireland.
Instead of treating pancreatic cancer with small-molecule drugs, the team is working on using particle-based delivery systems, including liposomes, which are nano-sized, fat-soluble, drug-delivery packets; the team’s theory is that these could remain “stuck” in a tumor for days or weeks, allowing for sustained release of a drug.
“A key hypothesis we will test in this grant is that conventional small molecules are the wrong drugs to use with these ‘tumor-priming’ strategies,” said Robert M. Straubinger, PhD, professor of pharmaceutical sciences and principle investigator of the U.S. effort.
He explained that about five years ago, several important characteristics of pancreatic tumors were identified. One of them was the fact that certain pre-treatments, including drugs that inhibit cellular signaling by a pathway improbably named the “sonic hedgehog” pathway, appeared to boost efficacy of drugs by promoting tumor microvessels.
“Because the pre-treatment causes the new vessels to become leaky, it’s like opening a window,” said Straubinger. “The drugs can flow in when blood concentrations are high, but when blood concentrations fall – and many small molecules don’t circulate for very long—they can wash right back out.”
Straubinger and his colleagues will try to take advantage of that leakiness by using nanoparticles, such as liposomes, which could take hours to days to diffuse into the tumor, as opposed to minutes to hours.
“This grant will allow us to explore new ways of improving the access of drugs to tumor sites,” said Christopher J. Scott, PhD, who leads the research team at Queens University. “Using current chemotherapies, only a fraction of the drug gets to where it is needed. If this could be improved, even only incrementally, it could lead to a major advance in how we treat pancreatic cancer patients.”
The scientists will be evaluating “tumor-priming strategies,” a sequential chemotherapy approach where one agent is administered that increases tumor blood-vessel leakiness and then a second cytotoxic agent is added, such as a liposome or a therapeutic antibody that should remain in the tumor longer to fight the cancer.
Scott’s lab will test whether decorating the drug-loaded nanoparticles with tumor-homing antibodies will give the particles an additional boost in effectiveness.
But because tumor-priming strategies are poorly understood and can produce variable results, the team will use what it calls “mathematical priming” to find out what works best.
“If we capture the time course and magnitude of how an agent affects the tumor, then we can use mathematical simulation to identify the optimal timing for priming and delivery of the drug,” said Straubinger.
These chemotherapy combinations will be tested by scientists at Dublin City University and at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, including Wen Wee Ma, MD, associate professor of oncology at RPCI and assistant professor of medicine in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
“We are delighted with the news of this award, which brings together complementary expertise in cancer research from three different nationally leading laboratories focused on developing new strategies to improve the treatment of pancreatic cancer,” said Robert O’Connor, PhD, now head of research for the Irish Cancer Society. Niall Barron, PhD, will head the Dublin City University group.
Straubinger, also an adjunct professor at Dublin City University and at RPCI Cancer, has been collaborating with his colleagues at the partner institutions, on this and related projects for several years.
Sligo to be first Connacht town to get SIRO broadband
At the announcement: (l-r) Sean Atkinson (Managing Director, SIRO), John Moran (SIRO), Rosaleen O’Grady (Cathaoirleach of Sligo County Council), Ciarán Hayes (Chief Executive, Sligo County Council), Liam Hayes (Local Enterprise Office Sligo)
As part of its fibre-optic broadband rollout, SIRO has confirmed that Sligo will be the first town in Connacht to get the service when it eventually launches.
The rollout of SIRO’s networks has already begun in the county, and once completed it will give those signed up to the ESB and Vodafone Ireland partnership access to a one gigabit connection speed.
Putting this into perspective, SIRO says that its service will allow a 4Gb file to be downloaded in around 30 seconds.
In terms of when the high-speed internet service is expected to be operational in the town, SIRO has said that broadband retailers will begin offering it towards the end of this year.
President of the Sligo Chamber of Commerce, David Kiely, said that the Chamber had been campaigning for such a service for some time now to boost the area’s infrastructure and to encourage new investment in the region.
“Sligo Chamber has been campaigning for some time for enhanced broadband at both a town and county level,” he said. “The introduction of this infrastructure into Sligo is a very significant boost to both existing and future industry and enterprise, which will benefit all of the Sligo community.”
Adding this sentiment, John Reilly, head of the Sligo Local Enterprise Office, said: “The rollout of SIRO in Sligo is particularly welcome news for Sligo businesses.
“It will position Sligo to fully engage in the ICT economy and will offer many businesses an opportunity to truly transform their current business model. They will be able to take full advantage of the internet and increase their turnover and profitability by selling more in the domestic and overseas markets.”
New supermoon will have lunar eclipse on September 27 & 28th.
For the first time in more than 30 years, people across the Americas will get the chance this month to see a supermoon lunar eclipse.
The event starts with a supermoon, which is when a full moon coincides with the moon’s perigree – the point in the lunar orbit when it’s closest to Earth – making the moon appear larger and brighter than usual. Then the supermoon coincides with a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes directly into Earth’s shadow.
It is a rare celestial sight for those of us on Earth. And to give us an even rarer view, this NASA animation shows what the event would look like from the moon:
In this perspective, a red ring of sunrises and sunsets lines the Earth, casting a rosy glow on the lunar landscape. And with the sun hidden and the sky completely dark, bright stars fill the sky.
Back down on Earth, stargazers can look forward to seeing moon bathed in tints of red. During a total lunar eclipse, the moon often turns a reddish color when it’s hit by sunlight bent by the Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in a phenomenon called a “blood moon.”
A supermoon lunar eclipse is a rare event that has only happened five times since 1900, most recently in 1982. After this month, it won’t happen again until 2033.
The supermoon lunar eclipse will be visible throughout North and South America the night of September 27, NASA said, while those in Europe and Africa can see it in the early morning hours of September 28. Unlike a solar eclipse, which is dangerous to look at with the naked eye, experts say it’s perfectly safe to watch a lunar eclipse.
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