A good salary and a pension are no longer enough to satisfy newcomers to the Irish corporate world.

According to Kevin Kinsella, senior healthcare consultant at Mercer, new employees now look at the benefits on offer in addition to a decent salary, and health insurance features high on their list of priorities.

It is estimated that almost 90 per cent of large Irish companies provide healthcare plans for their employees, with the take-up among staff being significantly higher in Ireland than in the UK.

According to Kinsella, 53 per cent of Irish employees sign up to their company's plan, compared with only 11 per cent in the UK. As a result, it is important that the company offers the right scheme.

"Which plan a company chooses will depend very much on the demographic of that particular outfit," says Kinsella.

If a company has a mature workforce, he adds, it will want to sign up for a health plan with access to high-technology hospitals for cardiac care. If, on the other hand, the employees are mainly at the younger end of the spectrum, it will be more appropriate to have better maternity benefits and access to treatment for sports injuries.

While all these options are possible, choosing the most appropriate scheme can be tricky, especially as competition in the corporate health plan market has never been hotter.

"It's a real battleground for private health insurance companies," says Kinsella, adding that it tends to be a more profitable area of business than the individual market. "It's like anything. If you have paid for it yourself, you are more likely to use it than if it is bought for you by someone else."

As a result, fewer claims tend to be made on corporate health policies, making them much more attractive for the insurance provider.

One example of the competitive state of the market is the fact that, while VHI recently raised its prices for individual consumers by an average of 8.5 per cent, the increase in the corporate market was only about 3 per cent.

It is also important to note that companies are not committed to staying with one insurance provider and, as a result, the insurers are constantly competing against each other for business.

It was reported recently that Quinn Healthcare, formerly Bupa Ireland, lost the contract to provide health insurance to the employees of US multinational Google.

The internet search giant opted to award the contract to the State-backed insurer which, given the fact that Google employs about 1,400 people, will be quite lucrative.

One thing that is important to note for anyone on a corporate health plan is that it is up to you, the employee, to claim back your own tax relief.

While you are entitled to claim relief on the gross premium at 20 per cent, it won't happen automatically and you must contact the Revenue to facilitate the claim.