Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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398. To ask the Minister for Health if he will address an anomaly in relation to private health insurance whereby policy-holders automatically have to take out maternity cover; and his views that such cover should be an optional add-on to insurance policies. [5413/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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In Ireland we have a voluntary, community rated private health insurance market. The Irish market operates under four key principles – community rating, open enrolment, lifetime cover and minimum benefits.

Minimum Benefit Regulations, made under the Health Insurance Acts, require insurers to offer minimum benefits to every insured person regardless of the plan they purchase. Every plan available is inclusive of a minimum level of hospital cover and a suite of procedures, some of which are available to the market as a whole and some of which will be applicable specifically to either men or women.  By way of example, the Regulations include provision for such medical treatments as a prostatectomy or testicular biopsy (in the case of men) and cervical biopsy or maternity services (in the case of women).

The health services and procedures provided by minimum benefit should be viewed as a cohort of procedures that are important and of benefit to the community of the insured population, and thus should be protected and provided as a minimum base to all.