The owner of a County Waterford bouncy castle company fears there could be hundreds of job losses if a new insurer isn’t found for the industry.

It’s after UK based LeisureInsure announced that it will no longer be offering policies to Irish companies from August.

Craig Dee is the owner of First Class Castles, he says they’re covered for another year.

He told WLR News, “We are in the fortunate position that we have insurance, we just
renewed this month for a year, that’s great for us, but unfortunately a lot of other smaller companies and other people involved in the leisure industry are in danger of losing
an underwriter to cover their policy which is very unfortunate.”

He says the insurance federation and the government need to step up

” You have a market that is purely dependent on the insurer and they just up sticks and leave, I don’t think it’s good enough and local government need to step up
as well as the Irish insurance federation. We have just been left high and dry and the latest count was about 4,600 jobs in jeopardy between bouncy castle hire, paintball companies,
petting zoos, mobile farms, leisure centres, play centres. It’s right across the board and if nothing happens by next August we will see a huge amount of job losses.”