Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 deal with the appraisals and that they should be conducted by the Central Bank.

Amendment No. 20 deals with recruitment of staff to perform certain roles, that they should be qualified in insurance and the qualification should be stipulated by the head of financial regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland. This system is in breach of the European Court and our Supreme Court. It is causing massive distortions and losses of people from the health insurance sector, contrary to the Minister's objectives. It is time to involve the Central Bank to a much greater extent and divest the Department of Health from the contradictory role of owning an insurance company and pretending to regulate the market in the interests of old people, when actually it is looking after its own incumbent insurance company. That is bad for the dynamism of the market and contradicts everything the Government says in other areas about the need for innovation, new entrants and dynamism. We have vastly increasing costs and a rapidly reducing number of customers and amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 20 are designed to address that problem.