Swings and roundabouts IME. In general it always pays to shop around but particularly in the case of car & house insurance. Fluctuates all the time as far as I can see. Cheapest this year will not necessarily be the cheapest next year and vice versa.
Problem with insure .ie is that if you need to do anything that is not straight forward like add something to the policy etc.. you have to speak to them. This is not really that easy I found, so went with Zurich instead. With Zurich, you can do it all on line..