Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I did not intend to speak again but as I reflected on section 18, I realised that as we are on Report and Final Stages of the Bill this may be the last opportunity I will get to comment on it. The amendment to section 18 brings further legal clarity to the Bill. Section 18 sets out clearly the intention in regard to a loss. The example used was that of a house burning down, in respect of which, because it had no burglar alarm, the claim was nullified. Section 18(4)(b) provides that "if the breach has been remedied by the time the loss has occurred" - in other words, the burglar alarm was broken but repaired before the theft occurred - "the insurer shall (in the absence of any other defence of the claim) be obliged to pay any claim made under the contract of insurance". It is hard to understand why we would have to legislate in this day and age for this type of situation. The example we have used is a contract in respect of which there was a warranty in place and an obligation on a consumer to, among other things, install a burglar alarm to protect him or her from theft; the burglar alarm was non-operational for a week or two following which it was repaired and the house was broken into and a claim was made in respect of damage to property. It is important to reflect that the reason this exists in Irish law at this point in time is because our insurance contracts legislation dates back to the 1600s. The laws that exists today in regard to the warranty and the breach of same and how it can nullify an entire insurance contract and a valid claim dates back to a court case that was adjudicated under British law in the 1600s, which involved the insurance of cargo as it travelled the high seas. This case is from where much of the insurance activity originated. The warranty in this case was that when the ship left port it had to have 50 crew on board. The ship left the port with fewer than 50 crew on board but it stopped in a near neighbouring port where it picked up additional crew, which meant the ship had in excess of 50 crew when it left for the high seas. The ship ran into trouble, the cargo was destroyed and lives were lost and the company was able to refuse to cover the liability because even though there were more than 50 crew on board, at a point in time the warranty had been breached, even though that had taken place well before then. This was happening in the 1600s. Unfortunately in 2019, insurance companies are still doing this and so we are using this Bill to modernise the law.

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