Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Sorry, 17 million people. Still, there were 18 insurance companies in the market in 2005 and today there are five. We have 4.6 million people with three or four insurance companies. How will consolidation not take place? How will consumers benefit from this universal health insurance model? Even if I believed this was the way to go, on pure market terms, we cannot provide for competition or fairness for consumers in a market of our size with so few providers, given that in a market five times the size of ours, the number of providers has fallen by 80% since the implementation of this model. This model cannot work. I hope it never sees the light of day. I hope it stays as White Paper and goes no further.

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