Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 1 December 2016

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Costs of Business Insurance: Discussion

9:30 am

Mr. Padraig Cribben:

Soft drinks are included. I would like to make just one other point which sometimes gets lost in all of this. Because of the pressure that guys are under - not just pubs, but all small businesses - if somebody comes into the market with insurance they do not look to see if these guys are triple-A, double-A or A-rated. In the last six weeks we have seen an insurer who came into the market and has been here for some time, which was regulated in Lichtenstein. It has gone belly-up, as they say. There were one or two brokers around the country using this particular underwriter. Whatever premium they have paid they have no cover for that period. There is a downside, therefore, in that unless we tightly regulate who is insuring them in the country, people under pressure will go to, let us call it, the lowest common denominator that will give them insurance. It may turn out, however, to be a false hope.