The floods last November cost the insurance industry more than €500m

Parts of Ireland which flood regularly will become "uninsurable" unless the government builds proper flood defences, the president of the Irish Insurance Federation (IIF) has warned.

Patrick Manley, who is also chief executive of Zurich Ireland, said the insurance industry cannot keep asking its customers to pay increasing premiums for predictable floods in certain parts of the country, when other solutions are available. He said homeowners could be exposed to massive financial losses from winter weather if the government failed to act.

"We live on an island. The island is in the Atlantic Ocean. It rains here. We know some parts of the country will flood," he told the Sunday Tribune. "If we don't put defences there, everybody else in the country has to accept that their premiums will have to reflect that danger. You risk certain parts of the country becoming uninsurable," he said.

Floods across Ireland, especially in Munster towns such as Carrick-on-Suir and Clonmel, during severe weather last winter cost the insurance industry more than €500m, Manley said – an unsustainable amount if the same sort of disasters recur regularly.

"You see the same premises, the same streets, the same time of year – it comes to a stage where insurance can cover you for most perils, but we can't ask other policy-holders to keep paying for floods," he said. "Insurance works perfectly for the event that can happen, but is not predicted to happen."