Two in five businesses borrowed to pay insurance, survey finds

TWO out of five companies had to borrow to pay spiralling insurance premiums last year and more than one in ten fired staff to divert cash to insurance costs, it emerged yesterday.

The Alliance for Insurance Reform (AIR) yesterday met with the Joint Oireachtas Committee for Enterprise and Small Business where they presented the results of their business survey into insurance costs and advocated solutions to ease the insurance crisis.

The AIR survey of 173 companies employing 16,000 people found almost 18% of companies suffered premium increases of over 100% in 2002, compared to 9% of firms the previous year.