Mr. Colm Croffy:

It is nearly back at that level again. It was interesting to hear my colleague from the livestock co-operative sector discussing all the changes and regulatory improvements in health and safety that her members are prepared to make. When we were formed in 1993, we went down the road of getting a combined insurance policy to look after all the members in the country. At that time, we agreed with the industry as part of the scheme that we would improve health and safety standards. Every festival that was going to approach a city or county hall would have a health and safety officer, a health and safety statement and a risk assessment done by volunteers. We have done all that now. We were told 25 years ago that this would involve reductions in premiums and in claims. What is happening now? It does not matter how many pages of health and safety assessment or hours of risk assessment we have done. Even though the insurance companies insist that we appoint safety officers and we photograph incidents when they occur, they settle when the book of evidence is provided. If our insurers are ultimately going to write a cheque anyway, what encouragement is that for the 40,000 volunteers throughout the country who are running safe and compliant events regularly?