Alliance for Insurance Reform welcomes new duty of care legislation
Alliance is calling on ministers to use new legislation to leverage reductions in insurance costs immediately
Print29 June 2023
New legislation which includes a significant reform of the “duty of care” within insurance law, has passed through the Houses of the Oireachtas.
The Alliance for Insurance Reform (AIR) believes that if this reform is commenced quickly and implemented fairly, it will rebalance duties owed to visitors by occupiers and ensure a fairer allocation of personal responsibility across society.
AIR expects the new rules regarding the voluntary assumption of risk to afford protection to a whole swathe of activities where risks are willingly accepted by people well able to comprehend the nature and extent of those risks.
The legislation is contained within ‘The Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2022’.
Flora Crowe, alliance board member and grocery stores owner has called for “the immediate commencement of this aspect of the legislation so that hard-pressed policy holders can begin to see the benefits intended by it”.
Having previously highlighted the number of personal injury claims in Ireland, average personal injury awards and insurance fraud as barriers to lower premiums, insurers have in recent times highlighted the need for these amendments to the duty of care as a condition for lower premiums.
“Now that this legislation has completed its progress through the Oireachtas, we expect incumbent insurers to deliver lower premiums immediately as the risk associated with every new or renewed policy has just reduced significantly” Crowe said.
Recently asked when policy holders could expect to see savings arising from this change in the legislation, Minister Carroll McNeill was unequivocal, noting: “When that legislation goes through during the summer, I will be picking up the phone and inviting the CEOs in here to have that very direct conversation with them again. Because the legislation will be passed then, [and] there is literally no excuse after that.”
The alliance is calling on the Minister to “make good on this promise without delay”.
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