Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister of State's comments. I will raise this matter with Insurance Ireland and ask the mart owners to do likewise. However, given that he is the Minister of State with responsibility for examining the cost of businesses, and I note his comments about the IFA, I can tell him that the businesses in Donegal with which I have spoken are seeing dramatic increases in their insurance premiums. The Minister of State said the insurance industry is working with the sector to ensure that measures can be taken to reduce the premiums. Many marts have carried out those measures. They have carried out the costly structural adaptations and changes to existing practices but lo and behold, they see their premiums go up when they are due for renewal. For example, despite having spent over €12,000 on introducing such changes, operators of one local mart saw their premiums rise from €8,000 in 2015 to a whopping €15,000 for the period 2017 to 2018. This is an increase of nearly 100% in 24 months.

That is not sustainable for a mart in a rural area. This is a business which is important and which supports an agricultural sector. Another mart has advised that the costs of its renewal is now a staggering €30,000. This cost is among its biggest overheads for the year and the figure is now unsustainable. It is telling us that it is unsustainable. It has scaled back its operating times and cannot scale back any further. The next step is whether to close the mart. This is particularly the case for smaller marts and co-operatives which operate only a limited number of days. Mart owners simply cannot afford to pay such inordinate insurance premiums and many fear that if the issue is not remedied shortly, it will result in their likely demise and closure. What they are reporting is what we know of, but those in the agriculture sector are at the mercy of a highly concentrated insurance industry which is dominated by a relatively small number of big insurance firms that can charge what they want.

What can the Minister of State do? He is carrying out the business sector review. His predecessor took on board some of our comments when he appeared before a committee. Independently of what I have said, I ask the Minister of State to take a sample of perhaps 20 marts across the country to see if insurance premiums have increased dramatically and to look at that when engaging with the sector.

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