Business insurance for construction & trades professionals

Start with public liability: it answers what you owe other people when your work injures them or damages their property, and it is the cover a principal contractor, a local authority or a tender will ask you for. On a construction policy the limit is €2.5 million per claim and €5 million per year, and damage to the objects and parts of the site in your care is included, at €25,000 per claim if you work on your own and €50,000 if you have staff. Two extras are optional: employers' liability for claims brought by the people who work for you, up to €13 million per claim, and faulty craftsmanship cover for the cost of putting your own defective finished work right. What this policy does not do is insure your own things: your van, tools, plant, materials and the works in progress are not covered.

Cover starts from €21.84 per month, including taxes, for the construction trades on this page. Your own premium depends on the trades you declare, your annual turnover and the excess you choose, so two roofers on the same street can pay different amounts. A higher excess lowers the monthly premium because you carry more of a small claim yourself: on a €4,000 claim with a €500 excess you pay €500 and Insify covers the remaining €3,500. Adding employers' liability or faulty craftsmanship cover changes the price as well. You see your own price before you buy, and you can cancel any day.

All 16: roofing, handyman services, paving, electrical work, fibre optic installation, plumbing and sanitary fitting, heating and air-conditioning installation, plastering, carpentry, floor laying including parquet, painting and decorating, shutters, blinds and awnings, tiling, bricklaying and pointing, gardening and landscaping, and interior construction. Cover is for businesses of up to 30 people. The turnover limit depends on the trade: up to €10 million for 15 of them, and up to €2.5 million for roofing. Two of these trades sit in more than one sector, so interior fit-out work also appears behind our furniture and home insurance hub.

It is not required by law in Ireland. In practice it is required by the people who let you on site: principal contractors and main contractors ask for a certificate before you start, site rules make it a condition of access, local authorities ask for it with permits and road openings, and public tenders set their own minimum level of cover. Private clients increasingly ask too, particularly on home extensions and refurbishments. The construction policy carries a fixed €2.5 million per claim and €5 million per year, so you can answer that question with one figure rather than a range.

Yes, that is the core of public liability: if your work damages property belonging to someone outside your business, the claim is handled and paid up to your cover limit, after your excess. On a construction policy there is a second layer for the things you are actually working on: the fittings, finished surfaces and parts of the building in your care are covered to €25,000 per claim if you work on your own and €50,000 if you have staff. Putting your own defective work right is different again, and it belongs to the optional faulty craftsmanship cover rather than to public liability. Work you did not declare at quote stage is the one gap worth avoiding, because that is the most common reason a claim is refused.

Employers' liability is not compulsory in Ireland, unlike the United Kingdom, and it is an optional cover on our construction policy rather than part of it. It pays claims brought by the people who work for you, up to €13 million per claim. Whether someone counts as your employee or as a genuinely self-employed contractor is a question about the working arrangement, not about the policy, so take advice if you are not certain. A subcontractor running their own business should carry their own public liability, and it is worth asking for the certificate before they start. Principal contractors often ask you for employers' liability before a crew comes on site, even though no statute requires it.

No. This policy covers your liability to other people, not your own property. In Ireland the phrase construction insurance usually means contract works, plant and all-risks cover for the job itself, and that is a different product which Insify does not sell. So your van, hand and power tools, hired plant, materials on site, stock and the works in progress are not covered here, and neither is the profit you lose when a job goes wrong. What is covered is injury and damage to others, plus the fittings, finished surfaces and parts of the building in your care while you work on them.