Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I was very surprised that the drop-off was only 7.5%. When one thinks of what people have gone through in the past five years with the loss of income, the loss of wealth and the loss of value of family homes it is pretty amazing that only 7.5% cancelled their private health insurance.

One person’s tax relief is another person’s tax. We lost the connection between tax and expenditure in this country and between tax reliefs for one group in the community and payment by another group. I cannot see why an open cheque should be given to the insurance companies effectively to fill for the amount of tax to be transferred from the generality of tax payers to 45% of taxpayers, when 55% of general taxpayers do not benefit from this at all. I do not think that is equitable. This is a modest proposal to cap this so that it does not get totally out of hand and at the same time to give some relief to encourage people to maintain their health insurance and to encourage other people to take out health insurance. The costs were becoming unsustainable.