Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Recently, my party colleague from Limerick, Deputy Maurice Quinlivan, met with the Alliance for Insurance Reform there. This alliance is a non-political group that brings together 20 civic and business organisations from across Ireland, including charities, representing 35,000 members, over 633,000 employees and 41,300 volunteers. Over many years, the cost of public liability insurance has been a consistent problem. Not alone does it affect small and medium-sized businesses, pubs and other local social activities across Ireland, and in rural Ireland in particular, but it also affects things such as children's playgrounds, GAA social centres, and taxi drivers. It has had the effect of closing down many small enterprises, with the consequence that people are becoming unemployed.

It also affects the hotel industry, small garages and practically every aspect of this huge source of employment right across this country. Obviously some form of regulation is badly needed to prevent the vultures, the insurance companies, pushing up the cost of insurance. The cost of insurance is a crippling factor for those trying to create jobs or make businesses viable. This report is a damning indictment from a non-political organisation. There is lack of response to the massive problem of escalating costs.

I understand the Joint Committee on Business, Enterprise and Innovation has been examining issues surrounding the cost of doing business in Ireland over the past year. I welcome this and I have read part of the report, much of which is very progressive and long overdue. The implementation of that report will be of huge importance for the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises. All commercial representative groups have cited insurance costs as a threat to the viability of businesses across Ireland. That is part of what the Joint Committee on Business, Enterprise and Innovation was told.

IBEC described how insurance costs are not merely high but enterprise-threatening in areas such as hospitality, distribution and retail. It went on to say that the solutions to the problems of insurance costs are remarkably simple, but politically challenging. I think that is a very adequate statement. It is politically challenging. For too long this House, irrespective of who has been in government, has failed in its responsibility to stand up to the big insurance companies and to protect the people who need to survive and to be viable and who continue to employ tens of thousands of people right across Ireland.

According to a recent survey from the Irish Hotel Federation, more than 80% of hoteliers have said that rising insurance costs are having a significant negative impact on their businesses. That is a huge indictment. That indictment is also a challenge for all of us to try to ensure that insurance costs are reasonable and that our businesses will continue to be able to afford insurance and afford to survive.

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