Mr. Domhnall Cullinan:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. In terms of passporting in from other jurisdictions, any firm that is licensed within the European Economic Area, EEA, is entitled to passport into any country within the EEA. That is a matter for the home state regulator. As indicated in our opening statement, we supervise 200 insurance and reinsurance companies and 70% of their business is actually done outside of Ireland. So firms operating here have a passport into other jurisdictions. Equally, there are many firms that passport into Ireland from other jurisdictions. The vast majority of firms, not in terms of cover provided but certainly in terms of the number of firms, passport in from other jurisdictions. All of those firms, regardless of whether they are prudentially supervised by the Central Bank or by a counterpart of the Central Bank in another one of the EEA member states, are subject to all of the consumer protection measures, especially the consumer protection code that operates here. As a result, every policyholder has an equal amount of protection from the local conduct of business rules, as we call them.

From a prudential perspective, the Solvency II directive introduced in 2016 is a maximum harmonisation directive. It sets very high bar in terms of the capital and governance arrangements, etc., that all firms right across the EEA must have in place. The prudential regime that operates throughout Europe and the local conduct of business rules that operate within Ireland apply to all firms regardless of whether they are prudentially supervised here or in another member state. That is slightly different from the position that existed prior to 2016, when there was a minimum harmonisation regime and certain minimum standards yet member states were still free to subject entities to different levels of prudential supervision. However, a complete new risk-based solvency regime was introduced in 2016, which has seen far greater results. The whole purpose of which is stated in the legislation. It is there for the protection of policyholders and beneficiaries. It has brought a new level of protection from the perspective of making sure that firms do not get into difficulty and policyholders can have a degree of confidence with the regime regardless of where a firm is prudentially supervised.

In terms of business interruption, as I mentioned earlier, we initially thought that 145,000 policies might be covered. We whittled the figure down to 31,000. It would be better if there was a very strong definition for business interruption. Our understanding is that most firms have now gone out. I mean that since the crisis happened, firms, when they sought renewal, clarified exactly what is covered under a policy in order to remove any ambiguity that might have existed before that.

I must admit that I did not quite grasp the question on life policies, but I will mention a couple of things. Our understanding is that very few applications for life cover are declined within the jurisdiction. Some may be deferred or postponed for a period because if somebody is under investigation for a particular sickness, disease or whatever else it might be then the insurer will not put them on cover until such time it has been decided whether there is some risk to mortality for that person. Our understanding is that even at that, numbers would be quite low. We will examine the matter if the Deputy supplies further information. I ask the Deputy to forgive me for not grasping his question. I am quite interested in hearing about the case.