Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The reason for the exclusion of non-life insurance business is mainly because much of the non-life insurance business is relatively small. It includes motor insurance policies and house policies. We tried to be as broad as possible to include as many circumstances as possible in which a money laundering risk could arise. It is unreasonable to extend the provisions of money laundering legislation to individual, small contracts to do with motor cars and house insurance etc. By and large these deal only with a very small amount of money. It was not included as a requirement under the third EU money laundering directive, which this legislation attempts to transpose. In the aftermath of the inclusion of investment insurance intermediaries, some insurance companies made representations to the Department of Finance, which in turn raised them with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, to the effect that it would be somewhat unreasonable to include all of them, as it would cause many bureaucratic problems.

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