Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I stand again today for my colleague, Senator Clifford-Lee. I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. It is always great to see her. She has done some super work in mental health and in her portfolio. I wish her the best of luck.

Fianna Fáil will be supporting this Bill. The Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2022 is somewhat akin to the Finance Bill and Social Welfare Bill, arriving in November or December every year just like Santa. The measures within are designed to support risk equalisation and sustain community rating in our health insurance market in order that older citizens and people with illnesses can afford health insurance and are not discriminated against in favour of younger and healthier people.

The Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill provides that stamp duties on non-advanced health insurance contracts will increase to €109, which is a decrease of €12. This comes on top of a decrease of €35 this year. Stamp duties on advanced health insurance contracts will increase to €438, which is an increase of €32.

It should be pointed out that despite this increase, the levy on advance cover will still be lower than 2021. The stamp duties collected on health insurance contracts do not go to the Exchequer. They are collected into the risk equalisation fund and redistributed in the form of credits to health insurers to compensate for the additional cost of insuring older and less healthy people. I very much welcome this Bill.

With regard to health insurance and how it links with orphan drugs, we know many health insurance providers such as Vhi healthcare and others are now paying for orphan drugs. They would have been under a lot of pressure from large policyholders and multinationals to pay for these drugs because they are available when they pay for health insurance in other countries. However, I would like to see a space where orphan drugs are more widely available to the public and those who do not have health insurance. I am hopeful that is something at which the Minister of State can look.

This next item is not related to the Minister of State's Department. It is more of a matter for the Department of Finance, but I would hope that the Minister of State would bear her weight when raising it with Minister for Finance. The Central Bank (Amendment) Bill 2022, which deals with the right to be forgotten for cancer survivors, came before this House recently. I am Chair of the cross-party group on cancer that came up with the Central Bank (Amendment) Bill, which received massive overwhelming cross-party support in this House. The Bill seeks to ensure that cancer survivors who have had cancer in the last five years will not be asked questions regarding their illness when they apply for life insurance policies or other financial products.

This is not something novel we are starting in Ireland. This legislation is well-entrenched, especially in France. It was one of the main election items in President Macron's manifesto. They started out with people having a right to be forgotten for ten years and President Macron reduced that to five years during his presidency . There was strong rebuttal by the insurance companies and much lobbying was done in France. We are obviously seeing similar pushback in this country. I am hopeful it is something the Minister of State could raise with her colleagues, however, because it is really important. The Minister of State has spoken out about her own survival journey. I am sure she will be supporting this.It is one of the main priorities of the Irish Cancer Society.

I will refer to another matter in order to finish to a very positive note; we have done great work this term on women's health and mental health services. We have menopauses clinics, endometriosis clinics, “see and treat” clinics, and a significant decrease in gynaecological waiting lists. Yesterday, we saw announcements about surrogacy. There have been significant advances in women's health and mental health.