Newly released figures from the Health Insurance Authority have indicated that the number of people in Ireland with private health insurance fell by approximately 50,000 between March 2013 and March 2014.

According to the HIA figures, 2,031,000 people had private inpatient health insurance at the end of March 2014. This represented a fall of 21,000 over the months between January to March 2014, and a further decrease of 47,000 by the year ending March 2014.

The drop in numbers could be largely to do with the economic downturn as in 2008 private health insurance in this country peaked when 2.3 million of the population had policies. These latest figures have suggested that any signs that people were acquiring private health insurance were a false dawn with numbers falling.