Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps the Minister will clarify and correct me if I am wrong, but I understood that the idea behind UHI was that incentives would be built in, from an insurer's point of view, to keep people healthy. This relates to cost. That is the idea behind UHI. However, one must get the public to buy into that. Why should a smoker give up smoking if there is no incentive built into it? It will not be a level playing pitch under UHI. It will be in the insurer's interest to provide some incentive to a person to give up cigarettes or lose an extra stone. There must be an incentive built into it or UHI will not work and we will not get the healthier population behind it, which is the objective. That is one of the flaws under the current Dutch system with regard to the number of people who are going for procedures whose necessity is questionable. If one is to build that type of incentive into it, which I presume is the principle behind UHI, surely one can also include some incentive, whatever it is, for people who have paid health insurance for 30 or 40 years. That would provide an incentive to grow the market in the current climate, which is extremely challenging and is haemorrhaging members.