Mr. Jer Buckley:

I will give the Deputy my interpretation of the questions he asked, and perhaps my colleagues will want to feed in afterwards. The memorandum of understanding was drafted by a very eminent civil servant, who is now retired, called Tony Smith. He did his best to set up an agreement between the insurance industry and the OPW whereby there would be a frank and open exchange of information. However, there is no buy-in from Insurance Ireland and no pressure. I would describe the memorandum of understanding as providing only for the exchange of information. There is no commitment to reinstatement.

The Deputy's point about Arup is extremely well made. Arup engineers were involved in building probably one of the most iconic buildings in the world, the Sydney Opera House. These are the types of companies we have coming into Ireland. As I have said before, we have some of the best schemes in the world. We have three experts coming to our national conference on Saturday, including Liesbeth van Riet Paap, a senior civil servant with Rijkswaterstaat, which is the Dutch equivalent of the OPW. Holland is a country that is partly below sea level. They say that if we lived in Holland we would drown, and if the Dutch lived here they would feed the world. The fact of the matter is they have worldwide expertise, and that is why we have invited them to our conference to speak. Ms van Riet Paap has visited Fermoy and can see absolutely no problem. The demountables are recognised as workable systems right across Europe, but insurance companies in Ireland are being let off the hook.

Regarding the provision of quotes, Mr. Kavanagh probably has more expertise than I do, but what we are finding is that insurance companies will quote a household but put in exclusions. They will quote the household and give it house insurance but they will exclude flood insurance, so one has house cover but no flood cover. In other words, the household has a policy that will protect it from fire but not flooding.