Sir, – Rather than asking why the HSE is underinsuring hospital buildings and insuring obsolete camcorders, the auditors cited by Paul Cullen should be asking, why are they insuring at all? (“HSE still insuring obsolete items such as car phones and camcorders, audit finds”, News, January 11th).
We take out asset insurance because we can’t fund replacement of our homes and cars. We all pay a premium that is pooled with others and paid out to those unfortunate enough to suffer the loss against which we have insured. But the HSE is bigger than most insurance companies, and being a State entity, there is no asset loss which it could not replace from its own resources or by special Government grant. The HSE paying insurance premiums is a waste of money.
I worked on rail privatisation in the UK and one of the biggest issues was the lack of any insurance record, as British Railways self-insured. There was no asset loss which could not be covered by itself, which would clearly not be the case for some of the 92 different entities into which it was being broken up under privatisation.
Who are these auditors and why are they asking the wrong questions? We deserve to know. – Yours, etc,
Ann Ingle: Deliberately going out of my way to move for no particular reason has never appealed to me
Gerry Thornley: How about an alternative look at Ireland’s Six Nations win over England?
Is Ireland anti-Semitic, an outlier of tolerance or in the middle ground?
How risky is it to buy a second-hand EV?
KENNETH HARPER,
Burtonport,
Co Donegal.
