Mr. Peter Boland:

Deputy Higgins highlighted some of the key figures we raised today. To simplify matters further, if you ignored all the reforms the Government has put in place over the past six years and just go to the heart of it, right from the time the insurance reform process began around 2016 or 2017, insurers maintained that claims drive costs. That was the number one focus of everybody. To repeat what was summarised, the total number of claims has gone down 46% across all areas of insurance since 2016. If you ignored everything else, there is the momentum to get premiums down. We have not seen any evidence that employer liability and public liability premiums have stabilised. In fact, if you look at specific sectors identified by the national claims information database, for office-based enterprises and, somewhat ironically, insurance businesses, premiums have come down quite dramatically over the past number of years. Premiums for the vast majority of other sectors that interact with the public, in particular, continue to increase substantially.

To go back to thatched cottages, we have been here all afternoon and applaud the work of the committee over the past number of months on behalf of thatched building owners. We applaud the work done previously and today. It is terrific to see progress but all of that progress is jam tomorrow for thatched cottage owners. Some 50% of thatched cottage owners are uninsured. They are an ageing population - the vast majority of thatched building owners are over 55. No young people are buying thatched buildings or are able to because they cannot get a mortgage as they cannot get insurance. Frankly, we have no faith in insurers to respond to this challenge in the short term. Mr. Hanley outlined various reforms yet policyholders are not being rewarded. The word we get from the umpteen sectors which have implemented significant health and safety initiatives in recent years is that when they are in place, they are ultimately not acknowledged by individual insurers. There is no return for all the extra effort and expense that go into additional health and safety measures. We have no faith in insurers responding to all of the recommendations the Department of heritage is putting in place.

From a market perspective, we are not convinced the sector will ever be big enough. I know the Minister of State at the Department of Finance referred to the Danish market, which has 55,000 thatched buildings. We do not see a route right now to get from 2,000 to 55,000 buildings because of the insurance regime. We do not see that as feasible. We ask how that sector is ever going to be sustainable.

What do we do in the meantime while these measures work their way through the system? That is where the Government comes in. The response from the European Commission on Solvency II is quite clear that intervention is possible. The Department of community affairs has already done it over the past number of years by subsidising very high insurance costs for community organisations that could not afford them. We are not prescriptive in the response from Government but we need a response from it because the insurance industry will not respond to this unless it is dragged kicking and screaming into a real response.