Barrington Report: Those appointed to the group

THE three-member group appointed by Health Minister Mary Harney last January to carry out a business appraisal of the private medical insurance market in Ireland, otherwise known as the Barrington Report, are:

Colm Barrington is managing director of Babcock and Brown Limited, the Irish subsidiary of the Australian-based global investment company where he specialises in aircraft financing.

Prior to joining Babcock and Brown in 1994, he held various positions in the aviation financing industry, including the positions of president, GE Capital Aviation Services Limited, chief operating officer, GPA Group plc and chief executive, GPA Capital. He started his career with Aer Lingus where he specialised in planning, hotel acquisitions and hotel financing.

Seamus Creedon is an actuarial expert who has been a director and partner at KPMG, London, where he worked for 11 years to 2006. He led the UK financial sector actuarial practice of KPMG from 2000 to 2003 and was KPMG’s deputy leader of its global actuarial practice.

Over 1986 to 1993, he was the first chief executive of Lifetime, Bank of Ireland’s life assurance company, and head of Corporate Development, Europe for Bank of Ireland, based in London.

Dorothea Dowling is group liability manager with CIE and non-executive chairwoman of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board.

She was chairwoman of the Motor Insurance Advisory Board, which provided ground-breaking analysis of insurance issues in Ireland and laid the groundwork for the Government’s motor insurance reform programme.

She worked in the insurance industry in Dublin and London before being recruited into CIE in the 1990s.

Main recommendations from the group:

1. Steps to be taken immediately to commercialise and regulate the Vhi, and to mutualise it and arrange third party capital for it by the end of the first quarter of next year.

2. Government policy should encourage increases in the size, market appeal, innovation and competitiveness of the private medical insurance market as a component of a quality healthcare delivery system.

3. Community rating should continue to be applied, but only to those levels of their benefit deemed to provide adequate cover by most of the insured population and not to the additional coverage for the higher levels of insurance. 4. A simpler, more limited, transparent and, possibly, prospective form of risk equalisation should be introduced that would not be regarded as a subsidy to the Vhi.

5. Consumer protection structures and regulations in relation to private medical insurance need to be thoroughly overhauled.