Laya: Stamp duty rise will cost us up to €30m

Three of the country's private health insurance companies will be raising their prices because of changes to stamp duty announced by the Government yesterday.

Aviva, Laya and GloHealth say they can't afford to absorb the costs and will have to charge customers more for their cover.

But VHI, which is set to take the lion's share of the extra funding, has welcomed the changes.

Donal Clancy, managing director of Laya Healthcare, says there is simply no way that his company can avoid passing the charges onto customers.

He said: "This item alone will cost us between €20m and €30m, ten times any inclination (sic) of our last year's profits for example.

"That's just this item, not the tax relief at source, it doesn't include the hospital designation, doesn't include the additional claims cost that will arise because those young healthy people have left."