Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. This is a good opportunity to answer the question on insurance. There is one line from the report which is very relevant. It says that if we have high awards, we will not have low premiums, and we have very high awards in our insurance sector. All one has to do is look at any of the awards at the moment. Some of them are quite staggering.

Both I and the Government are very conscious of the difficulties that increased insurance costs generally, and in many instances the limited availability of cover, are having on small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as on businesses overall and on community activities. Consequently, following the publication of its report on the cost of motor insurance in January 2017, the cost of insurance working group undertook an examination of the employer liability and public liability insurance sectors in its second phase of work.

While a number of the recommendations in the motor report are relevant to the area of business insurance, in particular, the recommendations regarding the book of quantum, the Personal Injuries Assessment Board and the establishment of the personal injuries commission, it became clear in preparing that report that there was also a pressing need to examine the drivers of the rising cost of business insurance. The second phase work culminated in the publication on 25 January 2018 of the report on the cost of employer and public liability insurance, following its approval by Government. This new report makes 15 recommendations with 29 associated actions to be carried out, which are detailed in an action plan.

The recommendations, covering three main themes, include actions to increase transparency, such as providing improved data sharing and collection processes and reviewing the level of damages in personal injury cases, which I spoke about at the very start. One action to review damages is to request that the Law Reform Commission undertake a detailed analysis of the possibility of developing constitutionally sound legislation to delimit or cap the amounts of damages which a court may award in respect of some or all categories of personal injuries. As the Deputy knows, personal injury cases are civil cases and these Houses do not interfere in the level of costs awarded in such cases.

Another recommendation of the report is to improve the personal injuries litigation framework through a number of measures, including ensuring potential defendants are notified in sufficient time that an incident has occurred in respect of which a claim is going to be made against their policy. One of the big things we want to ensure is that the time periods contained in the General Data Protection Regulation and the data protection laws, which are kicking in on 25 May, align in respect of insurance. For example, if people have an obligation to erase video or any imagery taken in their premises within a period of 28 days, they must be given the opportunity to store it so that they can use it when defending a case taken against them.

The most important of these measures to improve the framework is tackling fraudulent or exaggerated claims and ensuring that suitable training and information supports are available to the Judiciary to assist in the fair and consistent assessment and awarding of damages in personal injury cases.

All 29 actions are scheduled to be implemented before the end of 2019, with 26 of those actions to be completed by the end of this year. The fifth quarterly progress update is due to be published tomorrow and will focus on the implementation of both of the primary reports. I am pleased to inform the Deputy that, in respect of the eight actions from the report on employer and public liability insurance due for completion in the first quarter of 2018, all eight deadlines have been met. It is appreciated that these eight actions, in the main, can best be described as stepping stones to the implementation of broader policy initiatives such as improving the engagement process between insurers and policyholders with claims submitted against them, and ensuring that enhanced communication between An Garda Siochána and the insurance industry will lead to more effective investigation and prosecution of cases involving insurance fraud.

Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister of State for his reply. If the recommendations are implemented, and the Minister of State says they will be by the end of 2019, it will certainly go some way towards addressing this ongoing abuse. I refer in particular to fraudulent and exaggerated claims and to a sharing of data and so on in respect of what I would consider serial claimants who have persecuted premises, small businesses, people involved in car accidents and so on. One sees many of the same names coming up again and again.

It has really been brought to my attention recently, with regard to somebody I know well, that the insurance companies are reluctant to challenge a claimant. This is often because the companies fear it would cost more to challenge the claimant in court. As a result of this, the person who has the insurance gets a loading on their policy because the insurance company pays out. The companies have a responsibility and need to face up to it. The fraudulent claimant is one thing but the reluctance of insurance companies to adequately represent the people whom they insure, as they should, is another. The Minister has said we expect this by the end of 2019.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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Yes, all actions.

Martin Ferris (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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It will certainly go some way towards helping to reduce insurance costs in order to protect small and medium-sized businesses, social clubs, play areas and even county councils around the country in respect of their public liability. We have seen time and time again that they are being persecuted with fraudulent claims and so forth, but this will go some way towards helping them and I hope it works out as the Minister of State said in his reply.

Michael D'Arcy (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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One of the things I found early in this process was that different companies have very different business models. There is a very great difference between FBD's model and Aviva's model. They all operate and they are all profitable but they all operate in different ways. One of the biggest issues in the conversations we will have in these Houses will be the capping of claims. As I have said, it is a civil matter. Are these Houses able to get involved? I do not know. We have asked the Attorney General for his view. He is strongly of the view that we should go down the route of the Law Reform Commission and ask it to put together a report to which stakeholders could contribute.

4 o’clock

Subsequent to that, we will see what can happen. People have access to courts, as allowed for in our written Constitution.

For me, there are pathways that have to be improved. With regard to data and imagery, I mentioned that people should have the opportunity to protect themselves. On too many occasions, I have heard people say they were told 18 months after the event that there was a claim coming and that they had no method of protecting themselves. That is wrong so we are going to rectify it.

I met the Minister for Justice and Equality, who just left the Chamber, and we are satisfied the analysis was that the legislation in place was sufficiently strong to deal with somebody making a fraudulent or exaggerated claim and did not need to be improved. However, where a judge in a case says some part of a claim has been exaggerated or is fraudulent, we have to improve the pathway between the parties in court and between the Garda and DPP. In the context in question, however, the sanction is sufficiently strong but the pathway was poor. We are, therefore, trying to do everything I have described. The process is to be concluded by the end of the third quarter of this year. We will be in a position to have many of the recommendations concluded. The focus on people who are fraudulent is one thing but the Deputy should note that, for every fraudulent claim, there are many more exaggerated claims. In Ireland, people do not view an insurance payout as the sum of money required to put one back in the position one was in before the event leading to the claim; they ask how much they can get out of it. We must try to defeat that.