A junior minister has said he wants to hear about incidents where insurers are not “playing fair” with claims relating to Storm Éowyn.
Minister of State at the Department of Finance Robert Troy said he expects over 20,000 claims to be placed with insurance companies relating to Storm Éowyn, worth an estimated €200 million.
By the end of January, 14,099 claims worth €116 million had been submitted, he said.
Of these, 70 per cent were home, 23 per cent were commercial and 7 per cent were motor claims.
“That figure will easily rise to in excess of 20,000 [claims] and with the projected claims of €200 million,” he told RTÉ’s Drivetime.
“This is the largest wind event of the last 20 years and, as a consequence of that, the compensation will be one of the largest in the last 20 years also.”
He said that all standard policies do include storm damage cover and encouraged people to submit claims.
“If insurance companies are not playing fair with their customers well I’d like to hear about it because that’s the reason why I met with Insurance Ireland last week, to ensure that they are playing fair with people.”
The arrival of Storm Éowyn prompted a nationwide red-level weather warning and saw record-breaking winds and over a million households’ power cut on the island of Ireland.
Days after the storm, thousands of homes, businesses and farms remained without power and water as crews were under pressure to restore widespread outages.
On Tuesday, the ESB said it had restored power to over 768,000 homes, schools, and businesses, 19 days after Storm Eowyn hit, and that the remaining affected customers will have their power restored overnight.
“Given the extensive damage to the electricity network and the volume of repairs completed, we are asking that if customers have not previously reported loss of power to please contact us on 1800 372 999,” it said.
“The public should remain vigilant to the possibility of unidentified low hanging wires and should these be encountered, please keep away and report them to us immediately.”
Senior Government figures have admitted that the State needs to be better prepared for more frequent and powerful storms.
Asked about whether home insurance premiums would increase to cover the millions of euro in damage caused by Storm Éowyn, Mr Troy said he “would sympathise and partly agree” with that view.
Mr Troy who is responsible for financial services, credit unions and insurance, also said he was “disappointed” that there have not been greater reductions in insurance premiums in recent years, despite reforms being introduced.
“I for one am disappointed that there hasn’t been a greater reduction in premiums over the last number of years.
“Motor premiums, insurance premiums for the large part have remained stable or have reduced marginally, that’s not good enough and that’s one of the reasons why I was meeting Insurance Ireland in the last week and why I’ll be meeting each of the insurance companies over the coming weeks.”
He added: “We want to see the insurance companies live up to their commitments, that they had requested reforms a number of years ago, those reforms were delivered.
“We now want to see the insurance companies follow through on their commitment to reduce premiums for their customers.”
