Mr. Michael Curtin:

I will come in on that point. It goes back to the discussion about whether insurance should be made compulsory. As we said in our statement, there is nothing to say it cannot be made compulsory, but the unintended consequence takes us back to the Deputy's scenario about motor insurance. It is compulsory, so someone deemed high-risk or a bad risk from an insurance perspective must get insurance to drive on the road and that is where the declined cases mechanism, as it is called, works. Where there are three refusals the person is sent back to the first insurer. We administer it on behalf of the market, but if we were to do the same for thatched cottages, all properties in the country would have to do the same thing. Given the scale of it, with perhaps 2 million properties in the country, they would all need to get insurance if it was made mandatory. Then it would have to be administered. There would also have to be a scheme in place in case an insurer went insolvent and there is the question of whether it would breach state aid rules and all of that. While we recognise and are willing to do anything to resolve the issue with thatched properties, I do not think compulsory insurance is the mechanism to do it.