Irish Car Insurance Costs
The amount you have to pay for car insurance (called your "premium") in Ireland depends
on many different factors. The main ones are...
- Your age and sex: If you are a young driver – especially a young male driver – you should
expect to pay significantly more than anyone else for your car insurance. This is because young male drivers,
in particular, make more insurance claims (or are the cause of more insurance claims) than any other category
of driver. Also, because insurance companies also factor-in declining physical sense or abilities (such as
reaction times, for example) that come with age, drivers over 65 are also charged more than other categories of
driver too. Also, as women tend to make fewer insurance claims than men over all, they are usually charged much
less than men.
- How much insurance cover you actually want: By law, you MUST have third-party insurance
cover (which covers injury or damage you might cause to other people or their property). However, you can
(optionally) expand that level of cover to include, for example, damages to you vehicle cause by fire or theft
(which is called "third-party, fire, and theft cover"). You can also expand that even further to "comprehensive
cover", which will cover everything that "third-party, fire, and theft" covers, but will ALSO cover damage
caused to your vehicle in the event of an accident. You can even expand "comprehensive cover" further to
include things like "windscreen cover" (to replace a damaged windscreen) or "breakdown cover" (to cover the
cost of breakdown assistance). Of course, every time you expand your level of car
insurance beyond basic "third party cover", you are charged more money.
- Your driving experience: All car insurance companies take into account how much driving
experience you have in the form of a "no claims discount" (NCD) offered on a sliding scale. Even if you have no
previous driving experience at all, most insurers will offer an introductory no-claims discount and, for every
year afterwards that you DON'T make any insurance claims (or have any made against you), they will increase the
level of discount on your premium. Some people (with very good driving records) can acquire an enormous NCD of
as high as 71%! What that means is they pay 71% less for their insurance than they would if they had no NCD at
all. Even if you were only a "named driver" on somebody else's insurance policy in the past, most insurance
companies will still give you credit for that (in the form of reduced costs). Also, the status of your driving
licence falls under this section: anyone with a "full" driving licence has proven that they meet a certain
minimum standards of driving (by undergoing the official driving test, which is the same for everybody in the
country) and, thus, are less risky (and, thus, have to pay less) than "unproven" drivers using a learner's
permit/provisional licence.
- Your driver history: This is not the same as your "driving experience"; instead, it
relates to any driving-related conviction or penalty points you may have. Anyone convicted of serious driving
offences such as drunk driving or dangerous driving will be charged more for their insurance in the future.
This is because, by engaging in such behaviour, they have shown themselves to be a more risky (and thus
potentially more costly) driver. The same applies to penalty points, depending on how many you have (most
insurers won't charge you more if you only have one or two penalty points, but will start upping your premium
if you begin accumulating more points than that).
There are also other lesser, though still significant, factors that will affect the cost of your car insurance premiums. There include...
- Where you live: If you live somewhere with a higher level of car-related crime (such as
the middle of a city), then you will be charged more than someone who lives in the middle of the country-side,
for example. Again, it relates to risk: if where you live makes it more likely that you'll make an insurance
claim at some point, then you should generally expect to pay more (although you can mitigate that somewhat by,
for example, making you insurer aware that you vehicle is kept in a locked garage, or has a sophisticated
security system).
- The make/model & value of your car: If you have a high value, or high performance,
car, you should expect to pay more, since it is more likely to be stolen or involved in a crash, both of which
will result in claims for your insurance company. The same applies to left-hand drive cars, and certain
makes/models of vehicle that have a history of being stolen more often than other type of car. Also, if you're
actually driving a van, most insurers will charge you (higher) COMMERCIAL insurance rates, even if you only use
it for personal/domestic use.
- Your named drivers: If you have any "named" drivers on your policy, their status (age,
sex, driving record, driving experience, etc.) can greatly affect the cost of your insurance. For example, if a
husband puts his 40-year-old wife with 20 years of driving experience on his insurance policy as a named river,
his premium won't increase by much (or not at all). However, if he puts his 17-year-old son, with a learner's
permit and no driving history, on his policy as named driver, the cost will shoot up (to put it mildly!).
- Your excess: The "excess" is basically how much you have to pay towards a car insurance claim yourself. Most people have an excess of about 150 Euros meaning that
if, for example, they made a claim for 500 Euros, their insurance company would only pay out 350 Euros. You can
however, opt to increase the amount of your excess, thereby reducing the potential cost of a claim to your
insurer and, in turn, causing them to charge you less for your premium.
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