The cost of motor insurance is continuing to rise.

In the last 12 months, it has gone up by just under 27%.

This compares to just over 6% for other forms of insurance.

Director with Chill Insurance Padraig Lynch explains why: “The insurance company is focused on the market share and clearly in 2014 in car insurance alone the insurance companies lost 1.75m.

“So they are now looking to get the pricing back to a level where they get a return on their capital and that is what we are seeing at the moment.”

Meanwhile the government is being asked to ensure the Central Bank has the resources to prevent a repeat of the Quinn and Setanta Insurance failures..

AA Ireland's Conor Faughnan has said the Central Bank is unable to fully monitor the insurance industry: “The poor old Central Bank is desperately playing catch up,

“I mean they warned earlier this year that they were 40% under resourced in their insurance monitoring division and if you consider what insurance failures have cost this country in the last five years or so, just Quinn and Setanta between them are probably going to wind up costing the Irish motorist €200m.

“We have got to make sure that the Central Bank is actually capable of watching these things and preventing them from happening.”