Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I understand and accept that there is anger. Everything that I am doing is to try to ensure that we give businesses the opportunity to stay in business and trade in the way they should be trading. Deputy Pearse Doherty was correct to say there is no measurement in the State. There is also no measurement internationally for what we are trying to do. The CSO came to us last January with a number of options. We considered that four of them were not feasible as we could not make them operational. The CSO is to report back to us over the summer months with a structure that we believe we can apply and put into operation. I will not tell the CSO how to do it. It has the best people to do it.

I will not pretend that the insurance companies are white knights. They have been unhelpful in terms of how they hold their information. Deputies Pearse Doherty and Michael McGrath are aware of that from their interactions with them in the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. We are doing everything we can to try to ensure that small and medium enterprises the length and breadth of this country get a fair pricing structure and regime from insurance companies.

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