David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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329. To ask the Minister for Health if he will ensure that the Health Insurance Authority makes comparisons between valid, existing, to be discontinued policies and other policies available on its website where currently it only presents comparisons between policies which may be purchased for the year ahead but does not provide a comparison tool against a customer's existing policy where that policy has been discontinued in the next year; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [60094/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The Health Insurance Authority (HIA) is the statutory regulator of the private health insurance market in Ireland. Their functions include the provision of information to consumers regarding their rights and health insurance plans and benefits.

The HIA provides a free to use service for people looking to take out or renew health insurance. A key part of their service is an online comparison tool which allows any health insurance customer to assess what plans are currently active in the market. They also provide a customer phone line where people can call with specific queries.

From time to time, insurers retire plans from the market. Once a plan is retired by an insurance company, it is removed from the HIA’s comparison tool, to avoid customer confusion and frustration if they are offered information on health insurance plans that are not available to purchase. Currently there are 326 active plans on the market.

After a plan is retired, the HIA continue to hold the information of retired plans and can manually compare any retired plan to possible current alternative plans across all three open market insurance providers. They are, therefore in a position to compare plans over the phone or send a link of possible plans via email, to anyone that contacts their service, to support the choice of an alternative plan.