Paul Murphy: Insurance Crisis Cancels Feather Cairn Summer Projects

Thanks very much. Just on Monday of this week, two days ago, Feather Cairn Community and Youth Centre in my constituency announced that it has had to cancel its summer projects for this year because of the extremely high, unaffordable insurance costs they faced. That is a story that is replicated right around the country and is resulting in a real crisis for community groups, young people, families, everywhere. The Events Committee in Feather Cairn said that they have exhausted all avenues but they found that insurance costs were at an all-time high and they were left with no option other than to cancel this year's summer project. These summer projects, they're non-profit events, it's a non-profit organisation, it's designed to give children and young people a chance to enjoy themselves for a few weeks of their summer holidays. You're talking about visits for young people to water parks, to adventure centres, to working farms and other activities. It's an important part of the summer for the community in Feather Cairn for decades. And it's gone because of the insurance costs this year, obviously people hope it will be back again next year, but if we don't get a grip on this crisis, then it won't be. It's a huge loss to families and children in Feather Cairn and it's replicated right across the country. It is entirely unacceptable that the profit motives of private insurance companies determine whether ordinary people and their children get to enjoy summer activities. To add insult to injury, this fact that the summer project can't go ahead in Feather Cairn comes hot on the heels of the closure of the Feather Cairn Youth Horse Project. In the same community, the same reason, because of insurance costs. Another project that has been an invaluable part of the community for 22 years, of enormous value for thousands of young people and adults, many of whom have complex and additional needs. But it's currently entirely closed because they can't get the insurance that they need. All of this, the entire debate, all of the examples we're hearing about the impact on Feather Cairn, on community groups across the country, wrought by the insurance market, demonstrates again and again and again why we urgently need to break with the model of for-profit insurance and why we need a state insurance company to provide insurance as an essential public utility. And to provide insurance on a progressive, not-for-profit basis, that takes account of people's and communities' ability to pay. Such a system of state insurance would provide the cover needed to ensure that these and many other community projects can serve their communities unhindered by the profit motives of insurance companies. The underlying assumption behind many of the so-called insurance reforms in recent years, that is, by increasing transparency, will increase competition and that this, in turn, will inevitably lower costs. It flies in the face of our past experience, which shows that the real result of increased competition is an intensified cycle of booms and busts. Put simply, we cannot leave the insurance industry to profit here. It is too important. The rights of community in Feather Cairn, right across the country, are too important to leave it to the capitalist market. It should be run as a public utility, in public ownership and as a service for people, not an extortion racket for the insurance companies, investors and owners. The whole issue highlights the lie that the model of free market capitalism is somehow efficient. For who exactly is it meant to be efficient? It is not efficient for the worker who has to spend, you know, every single year for all their different varieties of insurance that they have to get. They have to spend time shopping around, looking for different insurance products, trying to find the best possible deal. It is not efficient for older people who may not use the internet and are therefore left absolutely vulnerable to be ripped off without any knowledge of the rip-off that is being perpetrated upon them. It is efficient only for the insurance companies, which utilise the massive information that is available to them to target people and to try and maximise their profit. Instead, that massive information should be available to our society as a whole and used to benefit ordinary people instead of used to rip people off. Decades of history in both the insurance market and the banking crash should be all the evidence that we need of this. Even the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank acknowledged during the Oireachtas Committee we had at the time in the Finance Committee a number of years ago that the presumption that encouraging more competition will automatically lower costs is what he described as an act of faith that relies on the prior existence of a very high profit so-called new entrants will come in and drive down premium rates. Rather than endlessly waiting for the invisible hand of the market to be freed, to work its magic, the solution is for the State to nationalise the insurance industry, to provide affordable insurance to car owners, to home owners, to community organisations, to small businesses as an essential public utility. Progressive non-profit basis would mean taking account of people's ability to pay, ending the systematic discrimination against young people, against those on low incomes and against working class communities. That is the single most radical reform that is needed in terms of the insurance industry to end the current crisis facing the community in Federcairn and facing other communities across the country. Thank you, Chair. Thank you.