Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Michael McGrath on all his work on this issue. One of the difficulties of the Minister of State's position is that he is not attached to the Department of Justice and Equality. We need a Minister of real presence in that Department to deal with insurance reform, move on with the Judicial Council Bill and make sure that the relevant Garda unit is established. In the past number of months, I have noticed much increased media coverage of claims that are failing in the courts but we never see any of these claimants being prosecuted for perjury or any action taken against them despite of the ridiculousness of their claims. Work needs to be done there.

There are communities that will not have a St. Patrick's Day parade this weekend because of the cost of insurance. There are communities that will not have a festival this summer because of the cost of insurance. The business people who are here today do not need to be here and should not be here but they are looking enviously at hundreds of millions of euro in profits for insurance companies while their businesses are going to the wall and their employees are being laid off in order to pay for that. We need action. We do not have the luxury of putting this off. We need the Minister of State to continue his work and to make sure that he brings the Government with him and deals with the issue once and for all.

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