Mr. Lawrence Owens:

There is the direct and the indirect situation. With regard to investment and the locations, the Government certainly has a degree of leverage with the insurance industry for the work that has been completed in certain areas and which have proved effective so far.

The word “understanding” is very vague and it gives much of the decision-making process back to the insurance industry. I am well aware we cannot impose a position on the insurance industry and there has to be due diligence and assessment of risk. As I said earlier, however, if there are individual and local flood defences with more resilience, coupled with a significant investment to provide flood defences for Cork, then, surely, the correlation must be insurance cover should follow. It should be reasonable cover, not cover at an exorbitant rate which means one effectively does not have insurance cover.