Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Rural and Community Development

Indemnity: Discussion

Mr. Michael Garvey:

Clearly, it is an issue. We would not have been called in here today if it was not. As I have said before, we have not changed anything. The big challenge here is that there is perhaps a far greater onus in certain quarters regarding compliance with regulations on health and safety. That results from the awards in the courts for injuries being a challenge and we have a cost-of-insurance review group looking at this at the moment. That situation has not gone away. We will have a challenge for as long as we see awards of the scale that are being made and until we see criminal prosecutions for failure to observe health and safety regulation. As insurers to the local authorities, we certainly are happy to sit down with our local authority members to discuss the fact that we were here today. It seems to me that the practice is not consistent across the country. Clearly, in the area represented by Deputy Fitzmaurice, there seems to a challenge. I was not aware of these issues until we came in here today. It is very hard, therefore, for me to say what needs to be done in that regard. From IPB Insurance's position, we are happy to sit down with our local authority members. We insure the groups that provide a lot of this employment and we will see what we can do to help that situation.