Ms Tracy Sheridan:

Clearly, from a business owner's point of view, the two areas that are a big concern and about which change is not happening quickly enough are duty of care and PIAB. On duty of care, I would like to give an example of an incident that happened recently in our play centre. It demonstrates very clearly the difficulty businesses have with duty of care. A couple came into the play centre with their four-year-old son. The parents went to get a coffee and the child went off to play. A while later, the parents called the manager over and said that their son had injured himself and that he may have broken his arm. They said they would head straight to Tallaght hospital and that they would let us know how they get on.

We got an email the next day that stated:

The x-ray confirms the arm is fractured. Suffice it to say at the very least he will be spending Christmas in a full arm cast. How could this happen? Did I put my child in danger by bringing him to your facility, which we love by the way, or is there something wrong that would allow this to happen? Is that slide really age appropriate to a four-year-old? I mean you expect your kids to be safe when you go to play centres. So I really don't understand what happened. The large frame says it is for three- to ten-year-olds so he should have been safe to use the facilities.

I picked up the phone and I spoke to the dad and I explained that our frame was custom built, it is health and safety approved for children over three years old, it is annually inspected by an external inspector, and we inspect the entire frame every morning before opening, so there is no fault in the frame or the slide. I had a cursory look over the CCTV and all I could see was that lots of children had used that slide without injury or incident that day or any other day. That slide has been in place for a couple of years. Hundreds of children have used it thousands of times. The dad seemed happy enough with this.

A week later, we received another email which states:

The hospital today confirmed that the haematoma at his elbow was not in fact hiding a fracture and thus they were able to remove the cast. So other than being stiff from being immobilised, he is fine. We are delighted, as I am sure you are, that there are no long-term impacts for him. I do think you should strongly consider doing something about the black slide. The experts that are certifying your slide as safe are simply wrong. How do I know this? Well, because my son went down your slide and ended up in hospital. I think some modification is appropriate to improve visibility and safety. Granted, the kids won't like me for suggesting that you remove the thrill factor but safety has to come first.

I rang again and said that we would look into it and I offered him some passes, but they came back and said:

I don't think we would be willing to take a chance to go back. I have no way to stop the kids from using that particular slide and I would not be comfortable with them using it for obvious reasons. I do think it is a great amenity to have in the area and I hope it does not take more kids getting injured before it becomes pertinent enough to take action.

We are starting to reap what we have sowed. Any incident or injury is now considered by the public to be proof of either something being unsafe or someone being negligent. There is no such thing as an accident anymore. We have to report the likes of that to our insurance company that will not doubt put a reserve in place. We will pay for that ultimately in our renewal. More important, these people could make a claim up to the point at which that child turns 18 years old plus two years, so it is a guillotine hanging over our heads all the time. Most important, that could be the claim that closes us. It is that simple. The point I want to get across is that this is not something that is getting better. Incidents like this that are clearly potential claims by the language being used are happening more and more often. This is something that is not getting slowly better but is rapidly getting worse. Something has to be done on duty of care immediately.

Another area I have great concern about is insurance settlement strategy. We had an incident a couple of years ago where a lady came up to reception with a piece of glass in her hand. She said that it went into her foot out of our ball pool. We were shocked and said we would do an incident report immediately. While the manager was doing the incident report, another customer called me over and said that they saw that person take that glass out of their pocket. Regardless, we reported it to our insurance company and heard no more. When I rang to get our renewal, my insurance company said it was perfectly entitled to refuse me insurance because I did not report a claim. I said that we did not have any claims. The company said that there was a payout of €12,000 to a person who got glass in their foot. That claim managed to bypass us entirely. It does not take a genius to figure out who our insurer is; we only have the one. The solicitor went around us and directly to the insurance company, which proceeded to settle it without giving us any opportunity to defend a claim on our policy. I felt we were just a means to an end where everyone got paid and our renewal went up.

It cannot be like that because what will happen is that the whole system will be unworkable for policyholders. It is a constant fear. It is a weekly fear. Every incident you are imagining what might happen. Most important, one by one we are closing. Play centres are closing, crèches are closing, and preschools are closing: one, because of the stress, two, because of the cost, and three, because we are being told we are high risk. We are not high risk. We are a soft touch for claims and the reason for this is because of how duty of care is being applied. That ultimately needs to change and the insurance companies need to get on our side and not use us for fees harvesting or claims harvesting.