No prizes for guessing what inspired these remarks.
Minister for Business, Enterprise & Innovation Heather Humphreys spoke about Ireland’s “compensation culture” during Leaders’ Questions in Dáil Éireann on Tuesday.
On the subject of exaggerated insurance claims, Humphreys, who was taking Leaders’ Questions in the absence of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, said: “I do know how frustrating it is for businesses when fraudulent or exaggerated claims are made because many of them do feel they are being punished for this compensation culture.
BREAKING: "People need to have some common sense…if you trip or you fall you have to ask yourself why it happened" – Pointed remarks about insurance compensations claims from Minister @HHumphreysFG during Leaders' Questions pic.twitter.com/hpLsUlZlfq
— RTÉ Politics (@rtepolitics) May 28, 2019
“My view on this is very simple. People need to have some common sense and they need to be responsible for their own safety. So if you trip or you fall, you have to ask yourself why it happened, and more often than not the answer is because of your own carelessness.
“But people need to accept that, and we need to change this culture, because there’s a culture in this country that says when you have an accident, it’s everyone’s fault except your own.”
Humphreys’ fellow Fine Gael member Maria Bailey has been in the headlines recently for a claim she made against The Dean in Dublin, after she fell off the swings outside Sophie’s on the fifth floor.
It later transpired that she had run a 10km race three weeks after the incident, despite claiming in court documents that she could not run at all for three months.
Over the weekend, it emerged that Bailey had withdrawn the claim.
On Monday, Bailey gave an interview to RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke in which she blamed the media for the backlash she received. She also refused to answer a question on whether she was holding items in both hands while on the swing.
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