Mr. Noel Byrne:

I understand totally what the Deputy has said, but when one looks at individual rights over the period of a lifetime one can take the assumption that somebody will die first. There is an assumption being made that he would have died first and that she would have been entitled to the estate anyway. The normal course of events did not determine that. If we leave aside why my brother was murdered and look at the other 225 cases that have happened since 1996 one cannot say that the partner who was killed or died would not have outlived the other partner. That assumption cannot be held.