Mr. Michael Lyons:

In most housing developments, there is an assigned certifier. Typically, depending on the scale of the project, the individual practice may or may not have difficulty renewing PI insurance. What has been happening in the last two months and what I can disclose anecdotally today is that I have had numerous discussions with colleagues who have been finding it very difficult to get renewals. One colleague, for instance, has a deadline of the middle of June and has no offer of renewal of PI insurance. From the middle of June, this firm will have to cease providing inspection and certification cover for any particular project it is involved in. I have a colleague who has a housing estate beginning in Wicklow in July with over 110 houses. His general engineering and architectural practice has been told that fire safety will no longer be covered under its particular policy. He has to inform the developer and the client that they need to engage a new engineer or architect to do all of that inspection and certification work, or they need to employ a specific specialised fire safety consultant on that type of housing project. That would be very unusual because engineering and architectural practices are typically able to cover domestic fire safety issues, particularly on single-storey and two-storey housing, because the degree of fire safety work is limited and domestic. If the firm's PI policies exclude it from having anything to do with fire safety work, it will have to buy in additional external fire safety specialisation, which obviously adds additional costs. The pool of fire safety specialists is finding it very difficult to get renewal terms. Some of them are being refused new renewal terms at the moment.