In 2022 Ireland made two important contributions to the debate over price signalling: (i) the publication of the National Competition Agency’s (NCAs) extensive investigation into alleged anticompetitive price signalling in private motor insurance (PMI); and (ii) the enactment of legislation that makes ‘the sharing of future information on prices …’ a specific presumed by object offence. The evidence does not support the NCA’s conclusion that the public PMI premium increase announcements by five insurers, a broker and a broker representative body were either a by object or a by effect breach of competition law. There are solid grounds for following the European Union’s existing open-ended approach to adding by object breaches through the development of case law, rather than legislating specific new by object offences. The sharing of information can, depending on the circumstances, be anticompetitive or procompetitive. It is thus inappropriate to characterise sharing of information as a by object offence, without an appropriate definition and guidance. This is not to imply that the competition in the PMI market in Ireland cannot be improved, as the European Commission’s acceptance in 2022 of binding commitments from the insurers trade association easing access to a data sharing platform so as to facilitate entry demonstrates.
Keywords: private motor insurance, Competition Act 2002, Competition (Amendment) Act 2022, concerted practice, tacit collusion, Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, price signalling.