Just two years ago, the sector was in crisis, haemorrhaging cash even as motorists were driven off the road by soaring premiums. Matters came to a head when the government-appointed Motor Insurance Advisory Board, chaired by the redoubtable Dorothea Dowling, lambasted insurance companies for allowing the situation to spin out of control.

How times change.

Dorothea has slipped back into the shadows, dashing the hopes of consumers who believed they had finally found somebody with the bottle to champion their cause. And the insurance companies have achieved the seemingly impossible, slashing premiums while simultaneously making pots of money.

The transformation is hard to fathom, especially as the carnage on the roads means it is as risky as ever to insure the driving habits of Irish motorists. Yet so long as premiums remain affordable, there is no reason for anybody outside the industry to probe too deeply.

A sure sign that we have entered a different era came last week when Axa, the second-biggest motor insurer with more than 20% of the market, revamped its product line-up. Back in the bad old days, price was understandably all that mattered. Now, Axa says, we should not allow price to blind us to all of the new bells and whistles it has to offer.

"Simplistic, price-driven solutions are not necessarily in motorists' best interests, " says Aidan Cassells, director of business operations at Axa.

"Cheapest isn't always the best."

So intent is Axa on moving the goalposts that it has even dared to differ with the all-powerful Financial Regulator, which surveys the cost of car insurance twice a year.

Cassells believes the regulator's work is lopsided.

"The way it presents the different products is misleading because it implies that you should just focus on price, " he says.

"But motorists must understand that there can be . . . and there are . . .

fundamental differences between these products.

When the chips are down, not all of them do what you want them to do."

For example, what happens if a thief drives away in your car at the petrol pumps because you left they keys in the ignition while popping in to pay for your purchase? Technically, your negligence allows an insurance company to walk away. But not every company plays it by the book, according to Cassells.

"We don't try to avoid liability and we'd be fairly sympathetic if your car was stolen with the keys in the ignition, " he says.

That's reassuring, but bells and whistles have a way of queering the pitch, making it difficult to separate the essential from the optional extra. It is nice to know that you are covered for windscreen damage, but should it be a deal breaker when choosing an insurance company?

A big part of the marketing man's job is to differentiate his products from those of the competition, and this is obviously the purpose behind Axa's latest makeover. But a more sinister reason for adding bells and whistles is to confuse consumers, making it all but impossible for them to compare products between companies.

We've seen it in the mobile phone business, where a multitude of different tariffs, none of them directly comparable, are deliberately designed to confuse. We've seen in the health insurance market, where the battleground seems to have shifted from hospital cover to who is willing to pick up the tab for reflexology.

It's time to strip out the froth and get back to basics.

In the phone business, the regulator has moved in this direction by setting up callcosts. ie, a website that helps you choose the tariff that suits you best. In the health insurance market the regulator has also taken action by stripping down the various plans to their basics as an aid to comparison.

The Financial Regulator should do likewise, expanding its motor insurance surveys to advise drivers on those parts of their insurance policies that are essential and what they can live without.