Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht

Property Insurance: Discussion with Irish Rural Dwellers Association

2:40 pm

Photo of Kevin HumphreysKevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are very welcome. I take on board what the witness said about using tradition and local knowledge. Certainly it is a rich fane that one should tap into and an under used resource in urban and rural areas. We have to look constantly at mechanisms for tapping into that knowledge. I think the proposed forum could work in a constructive way.

The witness talked about flooding, mapping and sea farms. Flooding is a topical issue no matter what part of the country one resides, whether urban or rural. Having listened to the witness the problems are similar. The geocoding is the same in Dublin as in Kerry, Cork or Galway. There are houses on top of hills coded as in a flood area. They cannot get household insurance and people cannot sell their homes because the purchaser cannot get a mortgage and they are totally locked in. This is very much a common cause. The Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Brian Hayes, is working extremely hard on the issue and Deputy Donohoe and I have raised the issue many times. He is working within a sub-group trying to tackle the issue. For those whose houses have been flooded, there must be some mechanism to allow them get insurance. It is better that they contribute to their own insurance costs if the house is going to be flooded. Most of the homes and properties that are flooded are on clear flood plains that floods on a normal basis. As there is also the one in a 100 year event or the one in a 200 year event, there must be a mechanism to allow that householder or business to get insurance cover. While we work cross-party here we should work together across urban and rural to achieve that aim. There should not be too big an onus in terms of cost imposed on the property that may be flooded once in 100 years.

There is another matter on which we need to work together, that is after flood defence works have been carried out, there is a reluctance on the part of insurance companies to cover the properties for insurance.

Taxpayers' moneys may have been expended to protect Clonmel, or areas such as Ringsend in my community, but people still cannot get insurance. The Irish Insurance Federation has appeared before the committee but I do not think it realises how big an issue this is. It speaks about 90% of householders and 90% of property being insured, but a growing percentage cannot obtain flood insurance and its is having a negative impact on the local economy.

If the suggested forum gets up and running how will it work in partnership with agencies such as the OPW to ensure rural areas get the benefit of flood defence works and identify what I believe are very serious flaws in the geocoding? Mr. Doyle mentioned a house on top of the hill. A house at the top of the valley in Lucan cannot obtain flood insurance although it is only houses at the bottom of the valley which get flooded. The insurance companies do not seem to be ready to take this on board. The Chairman has been doing some very important work on this and perhaps when we finish this part of the module and issue our report on flooding we can invite the witnesses to come before the committee again. The commonality is enormous; it is as much an urban problem as it is a rural one and we must work together to resolve it. I accept what Mr. Doyle stated about the mapping and catchment flood risk assessment and management studies, CFRAMS, and it is about how we co-operate to come to a solution. I do not see an urban rural divide in any of these issues; it is about how we work together to resolve them.

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