Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Kelleher for bringing forward this Bill. As my colleague, Deputy Ó Laoghaire, said, Sinn Féin will support it.

The Bill seeks to amend the 2004 Act such that when a court has dismissed a case on the basis of it being a fraudulent action, it is automatically referred to the DPP. The current situation, whereby someone appears before a court and tells what can be clearly proven to be blatant lies in trying to get compensation and whereby the defendant must take it upon himself or herself to seek justice, is simply not acceptable. Such cases should be automatically referred to the DPP. I am a member of the business committee, as Deputy Lawless said earlier. As part of the recent report we did on the cost of doing business in this country, we had many stakeholders and businesses before the committee and we talked about the issues affecting them such as rates, pay and so on. The biggest issue, however, and the one that dominated our discussion was insurance: the ever-increasing cost of insurance premiums and the cost borne by people having to defend cases that are clearly false.

The Alliance for Insurance Reform has done sterling work on this issue. The alliance is a non-political group that brings together 20 civic and business organisations from across Ireland, including charities, representing 35,000 members, more than 633,000 employees and 41,000 volunteers in community groups throughout the State. The alliance has been at the fore in campaigning for action to be taken on escalating insurance costs for businesses and charities. It has cited amendment of the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004 as one of its ten asks in addressing the problem of escalating insurance costs. As part of the presentation - not the business presentation, but the outreach to different groups and so on - we saw various videos in which people basically staged fraudulent future claims. They were busying themselves falling in shops and restaurants and they were throwing water on the ground and then suddenly slipping on it. The person who threw the water on the ground for the other person to slip on was the witness. These cases were brought to court and there was no prosecution of the people involved when the cases were subsequently discovered to be fraudulent. In some cases, insurance companies did not pursue the fraudulent person but the insurance premium of the company increased massively.

The alliance has expressed its huge and intense disappointment with the slow pace of reform and has said policyholders have been thrown to the wolves by the Government, with which I agree. 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 sites of social activities throughout Ireland, in particular rural Ireland, but it also affects things like children's playgrounds, GAA social club centres and taxi drivers. It has the effect of closing down many small enterprises, with the consequence that people become unemployed. Businesses are being bled dry by outrageous increases in insurance premiums, which are forcing some low-margin enterprises out of business. I am sure all Deputies have heard the same stories from businesses and community groups that I have heard again and again about the large premium increases, which are hampering their growth and forcing some businesses to close down.

We need a serious, far-reaching and radical shake-up of the insurance system in Ireland. The recently announced Garda fraud unit is welcome, but there is significant concern that it will be funded directly by insurers, which should not be the case. Earlier Sinn Féin launched its pre-budget proposals, which contained provisions to fund the Garda fraud unit from public sources. There is a clear need for such a unit. However, it is the role of An Garda Síochána to form such a unit, and it should be funded from State resources. Fine Gael has been in government for seven years, and it seems all we have got so far is the cost of insurance working group. This group, however, has not brought about any reduction whatsoever in insurance costs. The Government's approach has been described as death by 1,000 consultations, which is an accurate portrayal. Every time we raise this issue we are referred to some new report, consultation, discussion or working group. We do not need any more of this; we need real, tangible and far-reaching action.

I again thank Deputy Kelleher for bringing forward this Bill. I hope Fianna Fáil will use some of its influence in the coalition deal to ensure that insurance costs are tackled to help businesses across Ireland.

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