Nessa Cosgrove (Labour)

I, too, welcome the Minister of State and this debate. The Labour Party, in our submission on the new action plan on insurance reform, highlighted a number of areas of reform, including transparency, high premiums which do not match up with the reduced number of claimants, competitiveness, tackling fraud and investment in innovation and skills. The areas I will focus on today are affordability and availability.

In cities, towns and villages throughout the country, including my area of counties Sligo and Leitrim, many community groups formed for the sole purpose of developing playgrounds for their children and communities. I was one of those parents who started on the journey of developing a playground in my local housing estate. Sligo County Council was extremely helpful in helping us to secure the land. We also knew we were eligible to secure more supports from organisations like the Sligo LEADER group to help with the initial set-up costs. However, when we spoke to many other parents involved in similar community groups we soon realised that we were only starting on the fundraising journey. We did not realise we would have to fundraise to cover insurance costs every single year. Sadly, many of these playgrounds were forced to close or were ineligible for insurance. Many stayed closed while others had to remain closed for long periods due to an inability to cover the cost of rising insurance costs, despite no claims.

The Labour Party has been raising this issue for many years. We have called on the State to develop new initiatives such as pooled group insurance schemes or broaden the remit of the IPB Insurance to support the voluntary and community sector. I commend the Alliance for Insurance Reform which has been doing great work raising this issue and engaging local public participation network, PPN, groups which can see first-hand the difficulties faced by so many communities regarding insurance.

Many playgrounds in cities, towns and villages are managed by the local authority and their insurance costs are covered but many others are not. This is obvious in rural areas where communities have traditionally been responsible for covering the cost of insurance. I was delighted to hear the Minister of State recently announce that the Tidy Towns committees would have their insurance costs covered by local authorities and IPB Insurance. While this is very welcome news, I ask that the scheme be extended to include all playgrounds. Playgrounds are public amenities that add a great deal of social capital to an area. It is hard to continually return to the same parents every year to raise funds. Many parents do not have the money in the first place.

Why are school playgrounds, pitches and recreational areas not available to all children outside of school hours? Schools are told that children are not insured to be on the premises outside of school time but why not? It is not beyond the capability of insurers to ensure the liability insurance so many of our children have to take out when they are in school is extended to every child to cover them while they are on school grounds, regardless of whether that is during or outside school hours. Play, active play in particular, is so important for the development of children and this should never be jeopardised by rising insurance costs.