MARK LENNON,
Madam, - My family run a small specialised light-engineering business and employ 10 craftsmen. This year, it seems, we will not get insurance cover and will have to close. All our employees have been with us since apprenticeship - some for 20 years.
The cost of claims in Ireland is prohibitively expensive and consequently insurance cover is being withdrawn from many businesses. Going to court is indeed costly and inexplicably slow, taking maybe five years to get a judgment.
This is a legal crisis not an insurance crisis. Why does the legal system of this state not serve its citizens? Exactly whose interests are served by a system such as we have?
Successive governments have failed to tackle this crisis, begging the question, who is running this country? In the meantime could the last person employed in indigenous manufacturing please turn out the light? - Yours, etc.,
MARK LENNON, Crescent Place, Malahide Road, Dublin 3.