Mr. Paul Kavanagh:

I am a member of the INFF, the Cork Business Association, the Cork Chamber of Commerce and the Fermoy Forum which looks after businesses and home owners alike.

Prior to flood defences being built, Clonmel, Mallow and Fermoy were under water 15 times in 30 years. Every time there was a flood, these towns appeared on television screens just like Mountmellick last night. I was a victim 30 years ago when my house in Fermoy was flooded. Thankfully, I had flood cover then. As soon as I made a modest claim, however, my cover was taken away. Now 30 years on, there is still no flood cover being offered by Insurance Ireland members on that house, despite the fact that close on €40 million of taxpayers' money has been spent by the Office of Public Works, OPW, on making Fermoy as dry as snuff, as described by the former Minister of State, Deputy Seán Canney. No Insurance Ireland member offers flood cover to houses which previously flooded in Fermoy, Mallow or Clonmel. They are blacklisted, or red-listed, as they are all red zones on the various geocoding machines which insurers use to form their risk analyses.

Thankfully, through much hard work, I have convinced two foreign home insurers to work with our brokerage exclusively and look favourably on flood defence works completed over two and half years ago. Up to 80% of Fermoy's flood defences are permanent. They are mounds and are not demountable. There have to be demountables or every town will end up looking like a castle. Hundreds of millions of euro of taxpayers' money has been spent on demountable barriers. However, as Mr. Kevin Thompson of Insurance Ireland has said, it does not recognise demountable barriers. That is a damning indictment.

When Insurance Ireland starts bamboozling us with figures on the increasing number of properties it may now be covering for flood, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. The properties it might now cover may never have had a flood. A person may get a quote on an insurance website but that does not mean he or she gets flood cover. If the assumptions that person ticks on the declaration state his or her house is within 250 m or 500 m of a water source, then he or she has no cover. It is similar to the conditions used by some airlines where a person is asked to tick boxes just to buy the airline ticket. How many people actually read the terms and conditions?

Why not get a list of the 84 houses in Fermoy identified by the OPW ten years ago and audit them independently? I have spoken to my broker colleagues in Mallow and Clonmel and they concur with my findings. Several Dáil Members, including Deputies Fitzmaurice and Healy, have similar findings.

When it comes to commercial insurance, the stories are even worse because the majority of business premises in Fermoy, Mallow and Clonmel are all close to rivers. Not one of them has flooded since the demountable barriers went up but not one of them has got its flood cover back. To the contrary, several of them have had their cover withdrawn completely or an excess imposed on them since the works were completed. I have a list of 28 such businesses in Fermoy which we insure ourselves. Only seven have flood cover. Of that seven, they all have an excess. Five have an excess of €2,500, one has €5,000 and one has an excess of €20,000. An excess is the amount a business will have to pay upfront before a claim even becomes a claim.

The remaining 21 have no flood cover. These people cannot get loans or mortgages and they cannot sell properties because a purchaser will not be able to get flood cover. I cannot get flood cover for them. Nobody can get it for them, including Insurance Ireland. For new businesses, there is no flood cover available. Last December, I met the former Minister of State, Deputy Canney, and his Department secretary and I gave him documents which prove conclusively that not alone are Insurance Ireland members not getting flood cover, but cover is being withdrawn from businesses even if they have never had a claim. There is also proof of new businesses being denied cover, which documentation I also gave to the Minister of State.

We could not get flood cover at our new offices in Fermoy. If we could not get it, who will? Slide number 10 is a photograph of flooding at Ashe Quay, Fermoy. The line indicates the wall height. Half of the barriers were up and the water did not even rise above the wall. In the middle of the photograph is Fermoy Tourist Office which was built by the OPW and was denied flood cover by all Insurance Ireland members. In compiling these documents, I undertook a great deal of work in a data protection and business sensitive manner. With the permission of five business people in Fermoy and the critical information blacked out I was able to supply the proof to the former Minister of State. I am sure that he has shared that information with the current Minister of State, Deputy Boxer Moran, and so the Department is aware that I am telling it as it is. My colleagues and others in Clonmel and Mallow have similar stories to tell.

We have offices in Cork city with no flood cover and similarly in west Cork. There is a huge expectancy in Skibbereen, Clonakilty, Bantry, Bandon and Cork city that when the OPW completes its excellent works flood cover will be available, but nothing could be further from the truth. The late property developer, Owen O'Callaghan, told me that several multinational stores that his company were trying to attract to Cork city had been advised not to come to Cork as they would not get flood cover. It is the Government's vision to have the cities, towns and rural communities of Ireland up and running economically with full employment for all 26 counties. This can only be achieved if new, viable businesses are allowed to open and expand without flood restrictions being foisted upon them.

I am trying to persuade commercial business insurers at home and abroad to recognise the demountable defences but because Insurance Ireland will not recognise them, foreign insurers think there is something fishy going on. I have made this a personal crusade. Many individuals within Insurance Ireland companies agree personally with me on this issue. These decisions are made at the top. Attitudes need to change. The consumer protection code states that the consumer must be treated fairly. I do not believe they are being treated fairly and for this issue to be resolved, the Bill must be passed immediately.