25 years of levies to pay for Quinn losses

Insurance customers could be paying levies to cover Quinn’s losses for 25 years as the size of the firm’s financial black hole doubled and the Government expressed anger at being “misled” on the scale of the crisis.

The news emerged after the president of the High Court was told a call on the insurance compensation fund due to losses at Quinn in the UK could go above €1.65bn.

Domhnall Cullinan, the head of the Central Bank’s general insurance supervision, told Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns the Central Bank hoped the €1.65bn figure was “as bad as it gets” but “further peels of the onion” meant the call on the fund “could get worse”.