Mr. Jim Dowdall:

Certainly, Chairman.

It is recognised that this committee has done much valuable work over recent years and there is an opportunity for it to make a contribution on behalf of 2 million health insurance customers. There are five solutions I want to talk about. First, the Minister needs to live up to his promise, referred to by other insurers earlier, on public hospital rates and stop putting his hand deeper into the pockets of health insurance customers.

Second, research suggests that if the health insurance levy was cut and the reduction was passed on to consumers, lapsed policy holders would be inclined to return to the market and an increase in the number of younger insured persons would make health insurance more affordable for all. This should be done immediately.

Third, the Health Insurance Authority survey shows that older members are reticent to change insurer. Instead of blaming insurers for the customer mix, the Government should look at measures to end the dominant position of the major insurer and create a more equitable spread of customers across all insurers in the market. If this was done, it would create a paradigm shift which would help create a stable market and also remove the excuse from the Department of Health to continuously use the health insurance levy as another tool to favour its own insurer.

Fourth, the Government needs to implement lifetime community rating early in 2014. This has been on the Statute Book since 2001 and despite repeated requests from all insurers, it still has not been implemented. Fifth, the Government needs to make positive measures to encourage younger members back into the market, allow further discounts, lower the levy for young members and remove the levy from children.

Earlier this week the Tánaiste suggested that it was time to provide some relief for hard-pressed families and I did not see anybody disagreeing with him. A good place to start would be in the area of health insurance where 2 million persons are being seriously impacted by current policy. I hope that the committee can lead the way and be a force for positive change in this area.