Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

VHI has three younger members for every old member. BUPA has 18 young members for every older member. Clearly fair competition cannot take place in that scenario. Why the rush this evening? When the Quinn Group acquired BUPA, it did not acquire BUPA Insurance. It acquired BUPA Ireland, which is a service company servicing the insurance company. Therefore it needed to apply for authorisation. That application will probably be considered by the Financial Regulator on 28 February and thereafter it would need to be registered by the Health Insurance Authority, which would probably happen early in March.

However, VIVAS Health made it known that if the Quinn Group were to avail of this loophole, it too would use a similar vehicle. Unlike the Quinn Group, VIVAS Health did not need to apply for authorisation. It could have approached the Health Insurance Authority before 5.30 this evening or after 9 o'clock in the morning and reregistered, allowing it to avail of a further three years' exemption. That would mean community rating would collapse and no money would be paid until the end of 2010, which is in nobody's interest. We cannot continue to maintain community rating without having risk equalisation.

In response to Senator Bradford's question, both the HIA report and the Competition Authority report have been published. Nobody has suggested eliminating our current risk equalisation model.