Mr. Gerry Cross:

We very much share this sense that the availability and cost of insurance to businesses is a crucially important matter. We understand, as Deputy Doherty has described, how challenging it is when that insurance is not available or very highly priced. I agree with the Deputy that is a question that needs to be addressed. I do not have time to turn to my colleague on this, but data from the national claims information database, NCID, on employers and public liability shows profitability is not at a high level and it is a difficult area for the firms. That data is in the NCID and is available.

What we have to ask, as a Central Bank, is what role we can best play in helping to address that question. We have been doing so over the past years. That relates to ensuring, first of all, that insurance companies are well run and their pricing, underwriting and model are appropriately risk managed and carried out and they do not treat their customers in any way that is unfair, as we have seen through our approach to differential pricing and business interruption insurance.

When it comes to the question of the cost of insurance, our central and very important role, is to bring as much transparency, light and clarity to the situation as we can. In the comprehensive change the availability of the NCID data brings, we very much play, commit and contribute to improving outcomes in that regard.

Beyond that, as we have seen in the context of flood insurance and discussions around that, there are challenges for all of us, the legislator, the Central Bank and businesses, to find the root or combination of approaches which leads to better outcomes for the availability and cost of insurance. However, fundamentally, those questions are about how the insurance sector is organised under legislation. We have referred in our discussions on flood insurance to arrangements in the UK with its Flood Re approach and Spain, with its consortia of-----