Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

I made the point that an elderly person was paying for her private health insurance out of her own resources. The basis is that one will put a levy on people under 50 and will give a tax credit to those over 50. If elderly people aged 70 are paying for their own private health insurance, they will be expecting a tax credit of around €950 back per year. If they are not earning enough to pay tax, however, there is no opportunity to give them this sum back every year. This is a new structure for private health insurance; it is not the regular community rating, risk-equalisation model we have been using up to this point, because that was thrown out by the courts.

In the normal community rating the premium would be slightly different for everybody. This individual will not get the €950 back per year. That is my interpretation of it. There is nothing in the legislation that will in any way look after that elderly person who, for some reason, is paying his or her own private health insurance.

I also noted that patients who came into the practice had their VHI card tucked in behind the medical card. The Minister of State will be aware of this. Therefore, even patients with medical cards make stringent efforts to pay for private health insurance. I would like to know how we are going to get around this problem where elderly people pay for their own private health insurance. How will we give them back the €950 if they do not have tax credits?