Category Archives: Misc

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At last we are getting some data regarding the performance of the motor insurance business in Ireland.

The mere fact that 21 companies are listed as providers is extraordinary when five companies account for 87 per cent of policy losses.

One company accounts for 37 per cent of the market losses, two others for 15 per cent, followed by two more at 10 per cent, with one major player in marginal profit.

One must, given the wide divergence in losses, ask the simple question as to why we are seeing huge and uniform percentage increases across the board, with the threat of more to come. We might be forgiven if we came to the conclusion that in reality we don’t actually have a competitive market.

That these companies would take their policy income and invest it in markets that are at their most volatile in decades is at the very least foolish.

The fact that this is common practice and a mechanism to underpin what clearly is an unstable, if not an unsustainable, business in its own right, suggests the need for urgent Government intervention before many hard-pressed motorists are forced off the road.

It is ironic that as I write this one of the larger providers has a television campaign extolling the virtues of its policies. Surely retrenchment should be the order of the day.

Derek MacHugh,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.

Insurance and motorists (Irish Times letters)

Previously: ‘There Is A Cartel Of Insurance Underwriters’

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This morning.

The Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy fielded questions from the members of the Public Accounts Committee following his office’s report into Nama’s sale of Project Eagle.

During his appearance…

The meeting has just been suspended until 2pm when chairman of Nama Frank Daly will appear.

From 2pm, watch here

Previously: A Probable Loss Of Value To The State Of Up To £190million’

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It’s on.

Finally.

The Dublin Cycling Campaign writes:

Cycling continues to get the crumbs at the table when it comes to overall national transport spend. Of the €10billion allocated for transport investment in the Capital Investment Plan for 2016-2021, active travel (encompassing walking, cycling and other such measures) is allocated just €100million.

That means that cycling is to receive approx 0.5% (half of one percent!) of the transport pie. If that wasn’t bad enough, we heard in the last few weeks of further cutbacks in future funding for cycling projects for Dublin City Council by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport – as reported on Irishcycle.com.

This all comes at a time when we have had nine cyclist fatalities in Ireland this year already, the most recent of which was the tragic death of Donna Fox at the junction between Seville Place and Guild Street in the north inner city.

Dublin Cycling Campaign is calling on everyone who uses a bike in Dublin – for transportation or for leisure – to join our protest on Monday 3rd October so as to send a loud-and-clear message to the Minister that he needs to recognise that the status quo is not good enough – cycling needs proper funding to make it safer and to enable Dublin to reach its potential as a world class cycling city.

We are calling on the Minister to allocate cycling a better share.

Gulp.

Cycle Protest to Demand Proper Funding for Cycling! (Dublin Cycling Campaign)

Poster: Andrea Figueira

trump

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From top: Donald Trump and Denis O’Brien

In fairness.

Mark Malone writes:

….What’s even more striking, no media outlet even offers a hyperlink in its own self censoring coverage to the actual press release itself.

The press release [at link below] As we can see, none of it is original content, or even amounts to any sort of political analysis. Its simply copy paste of pieces, mostly uncontested facts already written online. Much of it from within Ireland.

Irish media outlets might consider their choice not to link or include any specifics outlined within ( eg O Briens donating to the Clinton Foundation whilst getting contracts from the US state department for mobile phone contract in Haiti) as pragmatic.

That I’m afraid is internalised logic, which any observer can see is based on internalising a fear of O Brien’s power and justifying something political as a business decision. And that’s a much bigger news than any copy paste job Trumps team fires out.

Trump’s Press Release re Denis O Brien in full (Mark Malone, Soundmigration)

Follow The Money (Donald Trump/Mike Pence)

Trump attacks Clinton over links to O’Brien (RTÉ)

Previously: Meanwhile, In The No Spin Zone

Pics: Getty, Rollingnews

Meanwhile…