Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The duty of care Bill. We were promised that by 2 May. Also relating to that we have seen in the last week that judicial guidelines are not being properly adhered to. There was an award in the courts last week of €145,000 for the dislocation of an elbow.

This is just off the charts in terms of where the book of quantum lies. What can we do to look at that? The number of people circumventing the PIAB process has risen by 6% this year. Obviously, we want to keep that process as robust as possible but people are finding their way to the courts.

Beyond that, I would point to insurance costs. I know of a company in Waterford that was paying €10,000 per annum. It had two very minor claims, one that did not even go to court, but because of that, it is now paying €30,000 with a €10,000 excess on the policy. This is for a small business. A second company in the leisure industry had a €50,000 annual premium but that has now gone to €250,000 for the next five years because of claims it has had. This is where we are going with insurance. It will kill business as we go along. It is unsustainable what is happening with commercial insurance at the moment.

The fourth area I would like to cover is offshore wind licences, which I have raised in the Dáil a number of times. There was a report in the newspapers on the offshore wind licences which suggested the RESS auctions that are coming up and due to be awarded are going to pitch in at around €150 per megawatt hour, which is three times higher than Scotland. I have to ask how we are going to be competitively priced to export wind energy but also what we are going to be charging our indigenous economy for wind-generated energy in the future and what it is going to do to the competitive position of Irish businesses.

On another issue that I raised in the Dáil, I have been advocating for some time for the development of a grouping like the Western Development Commission for the south-east region, so we can get applied research under one mantle, we can get a strategic alliance across the region and the region can put out its best stall in terms of what it needs, and not have this multiplicity of plans. As far as I can see, this has very much been resisted by Departments and others who do not seem to want to get it done. I cannot understand why, when we had the Border, midlands and west region declared years ago and, although it was not operating at full strength, we were able to put legislation in place for that. The south-east region is the poorest performer of the large regions in the country at present, it has been for a significant period of time and it has the lowest allocation of capital resources. Why would we not have something like a Western Development Commission model for it?