Mr. Michael Silke:

The big issue with insurance, for a start, is that people have never seen it as a feasible proposition to insure one's land against flooding. I do not think it is even possible to do that anyway. In 2009, when the big flood came, I lost a great deal at that time. I had a field of fodder beet and a field of turnips that were covered over and I could get nothing for them. They rotted. One must ask oneself whether, if one was insured, one would have got something. Possibly, one could have. The question is whether one could continue paying the premium. I gave the genuine example of the young girls in Derrymullen in Ballinasloe.

I do not see that as being where farmers want to go. As farmers, we see that one insures one's house and one can insure one's stock, etc. On insuring one's land against flooding, a farmer who loses his or her land loses every ability to feed his or her cattle for that year. We lost every bit of our ability to feed our cattle last year. The feed we used was bought feed. Everyone is in the same boat. It is a matter of how long one can stay at it and take this.

Let us say I was insured last year. If, through some figment of the imagination, one could get insurance anyway, could I go back and pay the premium the following year and then have to draw on it again. Where would I be? My premium would rocket, and at a time when the margins are not there.