Mr. John Sydenham:

By way of clarity, the Department of Finance has responsibility for insurance matters but we worked actively with the insurance federation and with the Department. As the Deputy mentioned, the memorandum of understanding, MOU, to distil it down to its basics, is that once we provide schemes, by way of reciprocation the insurance industry provides insurance cover to property owners in the protected area.

There have been issues recently about demountables. These are defences which are put up in advance of a flood. The insurance companies, in a number of cases, have baulked at providing cover in areas protected by demountables because there could be an issue vis-à-visthe risks around human intervention, etc. That has been in detailed discussions.

What is happening and what I think is more important is that both we and the Department are going to be looking in detail at the actual level of protection. There are issues around whether everybody who should be getting insurance in the protected areas is getting it and there are differing views as to the veracity of some of the statistics that are available. There is work to be done in that area to make sure that we have hard data so that we can see the area that is being protected by a new system and all the properties. Then we should be a little bit more structured in finding out who is or who is not getting insurance cover in those areas. It is an active process. It is under way.