Small business seeks low premia

IRELAND’S status as the country with the lowest accident rate in Europe should translate into lower insurance, The Small Firms Association (SFA) said yesterday.

The SFA’s assistant director Patricia Callan, commenting on the fact that Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the EU, shows Ireland with the lowest accident rate in the EU, said: “Nonetheless, the cost and availability of insurance remains the number one problem for many thousands of small businesses.”

Ms Callan disclosed that the findings from a major new survey on health and safety, conducted by the SFA in the last quarter of 2003, shows that 80% of all companies have experienced increases in employer and public liability insurance premia over the past three years, while only 2% have experienced decreases, with 18% remaining the same.