MINISTER FOR Health Dr James Reilly announced he had commissioned a review to cut the cost of private health insurance.

He said he had asked the Department of Health and the VHI to engage with actuarial experts Millman to undertake it.

Dr Reilly said he saw little to support the recent claims by some insurers regarding the need for a 50 per cent hike in premiums or anything remotely like it.

“I am most unhappy that the costs relating to private health insurance are not being addressed aggressively enough. But I assure the House that I intend to ensure costs decrease,” he said.

The report would identify methods for achieving the multimillion euro savings a report produced last year claimed was possible, said Dr Reilly.

The Minister said there would be a renegotiation by VHI with hospitals next year, as well as a renegotiation of consultants’ remuneration by insurers.

He would like, he said, if procedures that could be carried out in primary care settings, particularly in some of the new centres, would not attract the same consultant fees as applied when undertaken in hospitals, where side-room fees were also charged.

Dr Reilly said that while the VHI might have 60 per cent of privately insured patients on its books, it had 80 per cent of the muscle in negotiations as it carried that level of the costs. “I require it to use that muscle and more imagination to force costs down,” he added.

Meanwhile, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter said €47 million had again been allocated for criminal legal aid next year.

“Given the likely out-turn for this year, this allocation represents a considerable challenge to achieve essential savings,” he added. “In this context, I find the threatened strike action from the newly formed Criminal Law Practitioners Organisation absolutely extraordinary.”

Its leadership, he said, comprised some of the highest earners in the criminal legal aid scheme.

He believed that with more than 2,000 solicitors and 850 barristers on the legal aid panels there would be adequate representation available.

He said it was extremely questionable whether lawyers were entitled under the law to undertake that kind of action.

Mr Shatter said the the Legal Services Regulation Bill, which was published by the Government in October, provided for key structural reforms of the sector.

A new framework of independent regulation represented an opportunity to bring the provision of legal services out of the 19th century and into the 21st.

He added that he had invited the Law Society and the Bar Council to furnish him with any constructive amendments they considered desirable to improve the Bill and to meet him.

“It is disappointing that seven weeks after the Bill’s publication no substantive proposals of any nature have been received from either body and I await with interest any submission that either may make,” he said.