Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators Casey, Maria Byrne, Sherlock, Warfield and Kyne for their contributions. They are all very helpful and positive and accept the logic of the legislation.

A big element of this issue relates to the recovery of deducted State supports. It has been rightly pointed out that in the Department of Social Protection, there is a scheme called the recovery of benefits and assistance scheme. It simply means that someone who is involved in an accident and gets disability payments for a period is not paid twice when the insurance company comes to settle. For instance, if there was a settlement of €100,000 and someone had already received €20,000 in State support through disability payments during that period, the person would get €80,000 because they had already received €20,000. They would not get €100,000 from the settlement, which was the total value of the award, with an additional €20,000 on top from the State. They would receive a total settlement of €100,000 with €20,000 from the State and €80,000 from the insurance company. However, the insurance company would hand the €20,000 back to the State because it had saved that amount since it did not have to pay it out. That is the principle we want to pursue here.

This is step one. I totally agree that if legislation like this had been in place a couple of years ago prior to Covid, which no one foresaw, we would have had a means of dealing with this area. However, we did not have legislation and we did not see Covid coming. I see it as a good learning experience. We want to make sure that if anything like that happens again, we are in a position to legislate. That is why we are gathering information because it could happen across any sector. It could happen in respect of an environmental issue or any other payment scheme that arises down the road. We want to have information from the Central Bank so that we can draft good legislation on this in the future.This matter may yet well come to light as part of the quantum hearings and in the context of ongoing litigation before the courts. The matter is still before the courts and this issue may have an impact on that. The door is not yet fully closed on that issue. I want to put that on public record. Again, one could not retrospectively introduce issues in respect of to the insurance payout on a policy that has in existence maybe a year before Covid-19 came. While I would have liked to have done so, it was not practical from a legal point of view. That is my comment on that.

I want to also talk about a fair remark that was made, namely, that this legislation does not ban price walking. It seeks to get a report after 12 months, and within six months of the first anniversary. I accept that. It is important that we take a whole-of-government approach. It is not the job of the Department of Finance to run every aspect of the insurance industry. The whole-of-government approach means that the Department brings forward legislation and deals with the policy in this area, because this is a regulated industry. However, the implementation of that policy can be through the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, such as in respect of business. This is particularly the case with regard to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB, which has a role in that area. Legislation in this regard is coming before the House. We already have legislation coming forward from the Department of Justice on the duty of care legislation. We already had the judicial guidelines, which are now working their way through the courts.

The Department of Finance did not write the judicial guidelines, the PIAB legislation or the duty of care legislation. Neither did it write the price walking ban, which was done by the Central Bank. Our job is to make sure that all of these things are happening. It is not our job to do all of those things. However, I would see it as our role within the Department of Finance to make sure that they are all happening. That is what in this legislation here today.

I know that I am out of time, but I want to acknowledge the work of Deputy Pearse Doherty in this area in the past. I have acknowledged that work in the Chamber. We are gathering information here that will be helpful to us in getting good legislation into the future, as we done in the past. That is why we have the price walking legislation. Over the past couple of years, the Central Bank collected the data and now we have good legislation in this area. I want to do the same in relation to payments by the State. Perhaps the State was too quick to pay out money to small businesses, but it was a priority to get it out quickly. I have no apologies to make. We could not hang around to check business's insurance policies to see if they had cover or not. They needed help there and then. That is one of the lessons we have learned.

I thank the Senators. I look forward to being back here last week for Committee Stage, as well as for the final stages of the legislation.