Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support my colleague's amendment to this legislation. It is difficult not to be repetitive considering that the two previous speakers valiantly pleaded for this amendment to be accepted. It is clear that health insurers are having difficulties not just in trying to get the intergenerational mix about which my colleague, Deputy Kelleher, has spoken but also to retain the existing participants in the scheme. I see that as a major challenge, knowing many people who have had no choice, because of the decisions taken by this Government, but to cease payment in the private health insurance market. Some of those are more likely to be young, healthy individuals who by their nature are taking a gamble now in the hope that they will not need insurance in the future.

This creates a serious strain on the health insurance sector. I appeal to the Minister to examine the sector, not in the context of moving towards the schemes he has in mind to force people to take out health insurance but to try to assist them in the current climate. I do not have the answers for him, but he is in contact with the sector. Whatever incentive is needed to encourage people in order that they see the immediate benefits needs to be provided. The insurance sector will be put under phenomenal pressure at a time when it can least take it.

Deputy Billy Kelleher who has tabled amendment does not expect the Minister to accept it, but perhaps it might act as a catalyst within the mind of the Minister and his departmental policymakers to see the potential to address what is a phenomenal crisis. We hear statistics trotted out by the health insurance industry for the numbers of lost participants. I see this in my extended family and the constituency I represent. People are feeling the bite and cannot continue to make such a commitment. They are feeding their children, rather than covering the potential risk of illness. It is hard to blame them and unless we do something about it, we are pushing the bubble along a tube and, ultimately, it will burst. I appeal to the Minister to come forward with a methodology to find a way to solve the problem.

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