BUPA Ireland has announced plans to mount a legal challenge to a recent decision by the European Commission not to object to risk equalisation in the Irish health insurance market.
The decision comes as a blow to hopes by the State-owned health insurer, the VHI, that it would soon be privatised.
The company had also been expressing frustration with the slow pace at which risk equalisation - the sharing of the cost of claims by all insurers in the market - was being introduced.
Now the pace will slacken further. In a statement yesterday BUPA confirmed it would challenge at the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg the EC decision not to object to risk equalisation in the Republic.
"We have always claimed that risk equalisation is a subsidy which is contrary to EU law and makes competition unviable.
"We feel strongly that the Commission should have prevented the scheme for subsidy, and now that threat of risk equalisation hangs over us we must act to protect our position," Mr Martin O'Rourke, BUPA's managing director, said.
"This challenge will have no impact on members. Our challenge is in the best interests of our members and consumers generally," he added.