Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the passage of the Bill. It will go to the Attorney General for a review. I hope that commencement orders would take place as quickly as possible. The issue of whole-of-life policies is related to this Bill but is not within the Bill itself, where elderly people in particular would have taken out life assurance policies to ensure that their next of kin did not get caught with liabilities arising from a death. In many cases they have invested life savings into a policy. They would have been far better off putting the money into a savings account where it would be absolutely secure. Instead they have put it down a black hole and they are now at a point where if they do not continue to put money into this black hole they will not get the initial capital sum back. I know of one particular individual whose policy was for €100,000. He is now 93 and to date he has put in €120,000. He is required to put in the astronomical sum of approximately €7,000 per annum to retain the €100,000 policy. These are elements we need to look at. There is a need to ensure that these policies have a large endowment element. This issue is coming up too frequently for us to ignore it.