Results 12,641-12,660 of 24,635 for speaker:Mary Harney

Written Answers — Hospital Services: Hospital Services (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Operational responsibility for the management and delivery of health and personal social services is a matter for the Health Service Executive and funding for all health services has been provided as part of its overall Vote. Therefore, the Executive is the appropriate body to consider the particular case raised by the Deputy. My Department has requested the Parliamentary Affairs Division...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: I do not disagree with the need for competition in everything we are trying to do. We seek to foster competition from an imperfect position. This legislation will make the VHI subject to the Financial Regulator and authorised on the same basis of its competitors. Competition is at the heart of that. Senator Fitzgerald referred to the Minister as the regulator of health insurance but the...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Senator Fitzgerald asked about subsidiary companies, which must clearly be subject to the Financial Regulator as well. When one is faced with a group of companies and when one of the competitors is itself a group, it is difficult to identify from where the money comes. It will be a matter for the Financial Regulator to regulate the position in that regard. At present, the VHI cannot become...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Amendments Nos. 9 and 10 attempt to achieve something similar. Amendment No. 9 is the first significant amendment to the Bill, as drafted. As indicated on Second Stage, the Government decided in April that the VHI should become an insurer authorised by the Financial Regulator by the end of 2008. As stated at that time, the Government does not believe it is in the interests of either the...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: I do not envisage any difficulties and I will be quite insistent in that regard. The Office of the Attorney General advised that, for legal reasons, this proviso should be put in place. However, I do not envisage any circumstances arising in which it might be used. It is being included purely on the basis of legal advice.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: The principal purpose of amendment No. 12 is to clarify certain functions of the VHI board by setting them out more explicitly than is currently the case in the existing section 3(a). In addition, it provides for the board to establish a service company to provide services to the board itself or to other subsidiaries within the group. It is common practice within the insurance for a company...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the VHI does not extend the scope of its functions beyond those in which it already engages until after authorisation is secured. I referred earlier to the peculiar position which the board currently occupies as an unauthorised entity with a derogation from prudential regulation. It is the view of the Government that the VHI should not extend...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: I will not have a major philosophical debate. The purpose of co-location is to decant private activity from a public hospital into a privately funded facility. Taking Tallaght Hospital in my constituency as an example, 46% of the elective work carried out in 2005 was for private patients. The hospital has a large hive of private activity. The Government is stating simply that it wants...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: I have an open mind on this. My main interest is that it operates fairly and provides fair competition and certainly that its competitors have fair competition. The consultancy employed by the two Departments will recommend to the Government how it can accumulate the capital to facilitate authorisation. Whether this comes from private sources or elsewhere has yet to be determined. My...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Disposing of it would require separate legislation.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: I agree with Senator Twomey. One issue raised is that of mutualisation which, I understand, finds favour with many people in the VHI. This effectively means the members would own it. This would lock in everybody. A number of suggestions have been made but no decision has been made. My guess is that it is unlikely to be privatised.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: This Bill establishes that separate sister companies must be established for other activities, all of which will be subject to the authorisation of the regulator. I do not believe anything different applies in this case.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: We inadvertently omitted the word "health" from the original draft.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: The object of these major amendments is to provide for the transfer of the health insurance activities of the present VHI board to a subsidiary company to be established for this purpose. The new section proposed in amendment No. 19 consists of a provision to enable the Minister to set a date for the transfer to take place. The new section proposed in amendment No. 20 provides for the...

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: These amendments remove the need to seek the consent of the Minister. They are consistent with the desire to give the company commercial freedom, particularly given that the activities concerned will only arise following authorisation.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: It is a commercial semi-State company.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Yes. The control is as follows. If it wants to get involved in new activities, the Minister for Health and Children will give consent with the consent of the Minister for Finance. That will be done by the Financial Regulator after authorisation. Today the Minister can refuse to sanction increased prices for example. Those powers will go.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Yes. However, that power was used very much as a political exercise at various vulnerable times.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: It is not desirable for a commercial company.

Seanad: Voluntary Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2007: Committee and Remaining Stages (15 Nov 2007)

Mary Harney: Yes. I have not used it, but it has been used in the past.