Insurance firm’s ‘lack of humanity’ slammed by victim

Seamus Enright

A Mullagh woman has called on insurance companies to “show a little humanity” when dealing with people in uniquely difficult situations. Philomena Osborne cannot bring herself to tell her husband who is sick in hospital that the couple’s car has been stolen, with the insurance company refusing to deal with her as she is not the registered owner of the vehicle.
Suggestions that her ill husband could “sign a sheet”, or “send an email” have only served to frustrate what is already a deeply upsetting situation for the local pensioner. 
Philomena’s husband has been in the Mater Hospital in Dublin since July 4, when he underwent a surgical procedure. However, on Friday, July 13, he was recalled after his doctor flagged a further issue and he again went under the knife. “He’s getting better, but this thing just put the top on everything. I can’t tell a very sick man that our car has been stolen.”
On Saturday morning last Philomena had left the couple’s 2018 reg Dacia Duster at a designated parking bay at Whitegate, on the outskirts of Virginia and close to N/M3, in time to connect with the 109X service to Dublin. She had in the days since her husband was admitted to hospital regularly used the park-and-ride system.
“I got to there at 9.30pm, after spending the day in Dublin at the hospital. There was about half an hour’s light, and my mind was on getting home and seeing the dog. I just couldn’t believe it wasn’t there. I couldn’t believe my eyes it was gone.”

‘Sick’
Left standing in the small parking area “sick with shock”, Philomena called her daughter who was quickly on the scene, and joined soon after by gardaí from Bailieborough.
“They couldn’t believe it either. It’s one of those things. You are so one hundred percent certain and know and feel that something should be there and, when it’s not, it’s quite frightening.”
But, when Philomena contacted the company with which the car was insured, the Mullagh woman met a “far more frustrating” challenge.
On the day the car was stolen, Philomena’s son-in-law spoke to an out-of-hours operator, providing them with details, and receiving a commitment that someone would call on Monday. They told her that she was entitled to a courtesy car.
However, when that call failed to materialise, Philomena followed it up, but ran aground on ‘Data Protection’ legislation, with the phone operator informing her that their “hands were tied”.
“Because my husband is the named owner and I am only on the policy as a named driver they refused to speak to me. They asked me could he sign a form or send an email and I knew they weren’t really listening to me. The whole situation, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. The last thing I want to do is exacerbate by husband’s condition and make it worse than it already is. They told me then that if I hired a private car I’d have to pay for it myself.”
Philomena could, as has been suggested by some, simply sign the documents herself but she tells the Celt she wouldn’t do it “out of principle. I won’t go there, that’s not the kind of person I am. I’d walk to the Mater if I had to before doing that.”
She is meanwhile thankful to have so many good friends and loving family members, all of whom have rallied to her aid in what have been a trying few weeks.
But she says: “I’m not looking for sympathy. All I want is for [the insurance company] to show a little humanity and for a little common sense to come out of this.”

Spate of vehicle thefts
The theft of Philomena’s car is the latest in a growing spate of thefts and burglaries along the N/M3, which local Fianna Fáil Councillor Shane P O’Reilly described as having become a “corridor of criminality”.
Over the past four weeks in the east Cavan-north Meath areas, a total of four Toyota short-wheel base Landcruisers have been stolen from homes and properties; while more recently there have been thefts of tools from parked vehicles from Virginia to Cavan Town areas between July 4-11.
Vehicles were targetted in the Kilmore Business Park, the Lavey Inn and at Lisgrey House, with gardaí appealing for information in connection with a two-door black VW Golf and a green-coloured Nissan Almera Saloon believed to be connected with the incidents.
Cllr O’Reilly suggests that Philomena’s Dacia Duster could be “some place in Eastern Europe” by now, and the Landcruisers “on their way to Africa”.
He used the opportunity to once again call on the Government to make the process for funding for rural CCTV measures more easily accessible, after the only application from the county was returned “invalid”.
He is further annoyed by the “reprehensible” recent development that saw the traffic corp unit of An Garda Siochána moved from Virginia to Cavan Town. Both issues he fully intends to raise at a future meeting of the Joint Policing Committee.
“It’s backwards we’re going. With the CCTV, and for something so necessary as we can see, I’ve never encountered a more archaic system of application. It inspires no community to get involved and is nothing more than a nonsense process, a box ticking exercise dreamt up by some detached a civil servant living in Dublin who has no idea what it means to live outside of the city.”