Linda Nelson Murray (Fine Gael)

I thank the Cathaoirleach for allowing me to speak. This is not my regular committee. For the benefit of transparency, I wish to state that I was a director with the Alliance for Insurance Reform many years ago. I thank it for all the great work it continues to do. I was part of the Alliance for Insurance Reform because I was in the very position we are still talking about today, that is, unavailability and lack of fairness when it comes to getting public liability insurance.

I will speak a bit about me and where I feel things are not changing and where they are. I was one of a few people in the leisure industry who nearly lost their business seven years ago. I was approximately 11 days away from closing my business because I could not get public liability insurance. I ended up with a few other like-minded people travelling around Ireland and talking to other businesses. We brought approximately 120 of them together to form Play, Activity and Leisure Ireland, PALI. We were all frustrated. Many businesses were already closed, and we were worried we were all going to have to close ourselves.

To make the story much shorter, what we ended up having to do was to try to get the Government to bring in reforms. I spoke to Insurance Ireland, which I will talk about in a few minutes. We had to set up the organisation to try to get a group scheme. To this day, we are still under a group scheme. I still cannot, even with all the reforms that have happened, get public liability insurance like I can with my gas, electricity and other offerings. I have to be part of a group scheme. I am with another 100 businesses that still avail of the group scheme. It is wrong that we have to do that. We are very lucky that we have the premium among us all to be able to do that. Our premium is worth more than €1 million. We were able to do that because there is so many of us involved.

A great deal of work is done every year by the committee of PALI, of which I am no longer a member. A lot of work is put in for it to be able to outsource and try to get insurance. While we are paying less than we were paying individually years ago, I would not be able to get insurance if I was an individual applicant. There is something wrong when I cannot get insurance for my business, which, thankfully, has had no claims in five years. I still cannot get insurance. There is something that we need to be doing in that regard.

I sat with Insurance Ireland as part of all the work I was doing at the time. It mentioned the need for personal injury guidelines and the duty of care legislation to come into effect, which I worked on along with my colleagues, including Deputy Doherty. We got the legislation through and we were promised that would bring premiums down. That has not happened.

Only before the Seanad broke for the summer, we were told that personal injury awards were going to increase by up to 17%. We all worked very hard to make sure that did not happen. I spoke to my party, Fine Gael, to make sure that we ensured that would not happen. It is not going to happen, which is another great thing. It is another thing we have stopped because there is no doubt it would have been used as an excuse to increase premiums.

A particular community that has a playground still cannot get insurance. Someone who sets up anything in the leisure sector, a boating experience, for example, still cannot get insurance unless he or she is part of a bigger group or whatever.

We talk about increased competition in the market, but it has not happened in the public liability sector. It has happened in the motor sector and other sectors, but it has not happened for leisure businesses. We are a still in a serious position. Insurance was such a hot topic a few years ago. Although it very much still is, it is now submerged in the increased cost of doing business. Businesses are really feeling the struggle in this regard. We have to remember, especially at this committee, to highlight the importance of getting fair insurance, especially for businesses.

What I am worried about is that we have not seen the arrival of competition.

Even with all the work I have done, I still do not understand why there is not more competition coming in. As people who are all here to meet the witnesses because we are all very interested in working on insurance reform, what can we do to encourage the Minister involved to encourage more business to come in? Are there examples of other countries where this was the situation? What did they do to try to get more competition in? I will start with those questions and may come back to the witnesses after that.