Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No, I do not mean not after the fact. I refer to Insurance Ireland being serious about increasing coverage from 83% - the figure Mr. Thompson mentioned earlier - as there is still 17% to go. The members of Insurance Ireland cover 95% of the market. Mr. Thompson has told us that he wants to extend and grow the coverage. However, everything he is saying points to there still being many hoops to be jumped. Can Insurance Ireland or its constituent members give us an undertaking? In his own submission, Mr. Thompson has poured doubts over whether the legislation will work and over the Flood Re example in the UK. He is saying that the MOU is everything. It is the ship on which the insurance industry will sail. We have kicked the tyres on the MOU and no one here is absolutely convinced that the MOU is working. What we are trying to do, piecemeal, is work through a system whereby Insurance Ireland's members can be absolutely and utterly convinced that they have witnessed at first hand how the demountables are working because the witness is throwing doubt over the demountables. That is the evidence Mr. Thompson is giving here and he has cited two Irish examples. I want to ensure that Insurance Ireland and its members will be confident that the human error protocols that are put in place, for instance, by Cork County Council are so robust as to ensure the risk is absolutely and utterly mitigated. The only way I can be convinced of that is if people from the insurance industry are deployed on the ground when the early warning system kicks in and that there is a transparent protocol, to speak to Dr. Surminski's point, whereby we can all see that the insurance industry has been down there and is satisfied that the systems have worked.