James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Businesses throughout the country are facing crippling costs for insurance. I have dealt with many of them in Gorey, Enniscorthy, Wexford and New Ross. Charities, community groups and sports clubs are also badly affected. Many businesses have experienced substantial and unjustifiable insurance increases recently. With this in mind, I commend my party colleague, Deputy McGrath, on bringing forward this motion calling for urgent action to tackle rising insurance costs. Employer liability insurance, public liability insurance and motor insurance are becoming an unsustainable burden. Despite this, the Government is doing little to tackle this problem.

A good start for the Government to tackle the soaring costs for business insurance would be to create an index of insurance premium increases. The burden on businesses is bounded by the greater use of insurance excess and insurance exclusions. These are increasing the cost of insurance by the back door. Insurance fraud is another reason premiums are high. No data are currently collected or published by the Courts Services on the number of instances of fraudulent and exaggerated claims. In many instances, insurance companies are not challenging claims they believe to be dubious or potentially fraudulent. There is also a real and perceived lack of consistency in the awards handed out for personal injury claims.

These are all issues that could and should be tackled by the Government. If it does not tackle these issues, it will push many of these businesses and organisations out of existence. There are steps the Government could take. It could work towards creating a single European market for insurance to better enable businesses to shop around. It could urgently complete the recommendations in the working group's report on the cost of employer liability and public liability insurance. It could tackle insurance fraud. It is not acceptable that the Government's inaction is affecting all types of insurance costs. We should not forget that our small and medium enterprises employ almost one million people. It is about 44% of those employed. I urge the Government to take action.

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