John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. I thank also the most thoughtful legislator on the Government benches, Senator Colm Burke, for his contribution although I politely disagree with him. We are not proposing additional regulation by legislation. We are looking at existing regulation by legislation and proposing to loosen it because at present under the interpretation of the strictures of community rating, the Minister could not do what we are proposing. My sense is that we are loosening the thoughtless bonds of unthinking unnuanced regulation and allowing something which makes economic sense and which would be socially productive.

In terms of the verification question raised by the Minister, there are ample precedents for this in life insurance where there all types of loadings based on people's life insurance policies and whether they smoke. I am sure methodologies exist to determine whether people had or had not been compliant with assertions they made when applying for life insurance that they were or were not smokers.

In a hypothetical scenario, somebody who came into the hospital having benefited from a lower premium because they maintained that they were a non-smoker but was found to be a smoker would not lose their cover, but they might be asked to pay back the difference for which they had been in arrears over the years when misrepresenting themselves as non-smokers. In terms of the issues across generational solidarity, I stress I am a huge believer in community rating. If there was not a large element of personal choice in continuing to smoke - I firmly believe that this is a personal choice which is heavily modified by addiction, tragically addiction which usually occurs before people have come to the age of reason - in terms of intergenerational solidarity, old people and young people are just as entitled to smoke or to give up smoking and this is in no sense undermining any aspect of community rating. Where community rating is critically important is on age and on secondary issues such as genetics. Once cannot change one's family, although I must admit that in the event that Senator Feargal Quinn wishes to adopt me I probably will not say no. The reality, and I mean no disrespect to my mother, is that one cannot change one's genes or one's age but one can change whether one's smokes. This would be a very powerful message and I urge the Minister to accept it. I understand he will not do so but we will press the amendment.