Communities suffering over insurance difficulties
Local community groups, parish halls, and community events, are all struggling because of difficulties in obtaining insurance cover, Cavan councillors have been told.
Fianna Fáil's Aiden Fitzpatrick started by welcoming how the government had instigated the 66 actions as set out in their Action Plan for Insurance Reform, published in December 2020, which aimed to make Ireland’s insurance sector more competitive and consumer-friendly.
One of the “key asks” of both the insurance industry and reform campaigners was delivered - the rebalancing of the Duty of Care - while the Occupiers’ Liability Act had not been updated in almost 20 years.
But he stated that much of what the reform set out to do had not yet filtered through, particularly for businesses, sporting groups and community and voluntary organisations.
Cllr Fitzpatrick told the April monthly meeting of Cavan County Council that it had become “almost impossible” for some local community groups to get insurance for these facilities. The result was many facilities remained closed.
Similarly, the same could be said of community centres owned by the church or other entities, where groups looking to use a hall must also have their own insurance.
“One winner the insurance company,” he claimed.
Finally, Cllr Fitzpatrick highlighted how local events had found their premiums increase in some cases five-fold post Covid.
Independent Brendan Fay, who backed the motion, told his fellow elected members that while the number of claims were down nationally, the cost for taking out insurance had “gone up”.
Patricia Walsh (FF) noted that the policy in place for a building “should be enough” to cover groups using it.
Fine Gael's TP O'Reilly agreed, and there was support as well for the motion from Cathaoirleach Philip Brady who levelled: “If you're stupid enough to fall it's your own fault”.
He added that if costs continued to rise as they have then local organisations and groups would be unable to host events into the future.