Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the House for its support for a Private Members' Bill that has passed through the Seanad and is now going through the Dáil. The Cabinet approved a money message for the Bill in question yesterday. This means the Bill can go through the Dáil and be enacted. We hope this will happen by July of this year. The Bill is important for the families of missing persons. I initially introduced the Bill in 2014. I reintroduced it in 2016. The Leader of the House, Senator Buttimer, worked with me to get the Minister for Justice and Equality on board in order that the Department would accept the Bill. The Department has made some amendments to the Bill, but at least it is progressing. This type of legislation has been up and running in Scotland for over 40 years. The Law Reform Commission published a report on it in 2014. I am delighted that it will be law here by July. It will allow the family of a missing person to apply to a court for a presumption of death order if there is clear evidence that the person has died. At the moment, there is no provision in Irish legislation to deal with that issue. When a person goes missing, very little can be done to try to get finality on the matter. I think this legislation will be helpful in such circumstances.

I would like to respond to what Senator Hopkins has said about insurance. I think there is a major issue here now. The insurance industry seems to have availed of the upturn in the economy to adopt an attitude of charging whatever it likes. This is a serious issue in many areas. The message being sent out by the insurance companies is that increased charges are necessary because of an increase in claims. I would like to see the figures for the total number of claims that have arisen in the past year or two. How many of those claims have been settled and how many have gone through the courts system? How much money has been paid out in respect of such claims? The companies have not been upfront with us on these matters. We are seeing substantial increases in premiums right across the board. Now is the time to deal with this issue. We need to deal with the amounts being paid out in claims. We also need to make sure the insurance companies are not using the upturn in the economy to extract significant premiums from genuine organisations that are working hard to provide a service. This is something we need to deal with.