Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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230. To ask the Minister for Finance the number and percentage of households here that have home insurance; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1478/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Neither my Department nor the Central Bank of Ireland collect information on the number and percentage of households that have home insurance. I am therefore unable to provide a precise answer to the question.  However, the Central Statistics Office collects information in its Household Budget Survey on household home insurance (household building or contents insurance or combined building and contents insurance) expenditure.  While this is not a precise indicator of whether a household has home insurance, it does provide a basis for establishing the pattern of household expenditure in relation to home insurance. 

The survey is conducted every five years and most recently was undertaken between February 2015 and February 2016, inclusive.  I am informed by the CSO that this survey indicated that 91.1% of households, that either own a property outright or own a property with a mortgage, stated that they pay household building or content insurance or combined building and content insurance.  The comparable percentage for rented households was 10.4%.  I understand that this is based on 1,702,000 households in the State (an estimate of the number of occupied households during the survey’s reference period), of which almost 70% either own a property outright or own a property with a mortgage. 

The Deputy will appreciate that with regard to rented households, the type of home insurance that a tenant in such a household might purchase would be for their own contents only, as typically, the buildings and contents insurance would be paid for by the landlord.  I understand that the Survey did not collect information from such households as to whether or not the landlord paid insurance for the rented accommodation, so it would be difficult to make any assumptions on whether such households have home insurance or not.