It is usually late in the evening when it happens. The flights are booked, the apartment in Lanzarote is paid for, and the last thing on the list is the insurance. Then the medical questionnaire opens: blood pressure, the stent from four years ago, the tablet for the thyroid, the hip that is “awaiting review”. Somewhere in the house, someone says the sentence that has been repeated at Irish kitchen tables for thirty years. Be careful. One wrong answer and they will void the whole thing.
That sentence was once a fair description of Irish insurance law. It has not been an accurate one for several years. The Consumer Insurance Contracts Act 2019 quietly dismantled most of the machinery that made it true, and almost nobody told the people it was written to protect. If you are buying travel insurance in your seventies with a medical history that takes two screens to enter, the law is considerably more on your side than the folklore suggests. It is worth knowing exactly how far that protection goes, and where it genuinely stops.
TL;DR
- The Consumer Insurance Contracts Act 2019 abolished the old duty to volunteer information. Your legal duty is now confined to answering the specific questions the insurer actually asks, honestly and with reasonable care.
- An innocent mistake on a medical declaration no longer lets an insurer walk away. Under section 9, an honest error must still be paid; a careless one attracts a proportionate reduction; only fraud allows the insurer to avoid the policy outright.
- Insurers must ask specific questions in plain language, and if a question is ambiguous, the reading most favourable to you wins.
- Travel insurance was the third most complained-about insurance product to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman in 2025, with 241 complaints. The FSPO is free and can direct compensation of up to €500,000.
- The Department of Foreign Affairs cannot pay your medical bills abroad, even temporarily, and will not deal with your insurer on your behalf. In 2025 it handled 1,981 new consular cases, the highest number of deaths of Irish citizens overseas it has ever recorded.
What the 2019 Act actually did
For most of the twentieth century, Irish insurance ran on a principle called uberrima fides, utmost good faith. It placed a positive duty on you to volunteer anything a prudent insurer might consider material, whether or not you were asked. The effect was brutal: a claim could fail because of something you never thought to mention and were never invited to mention.
The Consumer Insurance Contracts Act 2019 (No. 53 of 2019) was passed at the end of that year and commenced in stages. Section 8(1) says plainly that its duties “replace, at the pre-contractual stage of a contract of insurance, the principle of utmost good faith (uberrima fides) and any duty of disclosure of a consumer (including any duty on the consumer to volunteer information)”. That is not a tweak. That is the old rule being switched off.
You only have to answer what you are asked
Section 8(2) replaces it with something far narrower: “The pre-contractual duty of disclosure of a consumer is confined to providing responses to questions asked by the insurer, and the consumer shall not be under any duty to volunteer any information over and above that required by such questions.”
Three further subsections matter enormously to anyone with a long medical history:
- Section 8(3): the insurer “shall be under a duty to ask specific questions, on paper or on another durable medium, and shall not use general questions”. The catch-all box asking whether there is “anything else we should know” is not doing the work the insurer may think it is doing.
- Section 8(5): questions must be in plain and intelligible language, the onus of proving they were plain rests on the insurer, and “where there is an ambiguity or a doubt about the meaning of a question the interpretation most favourable to the consumer shall prevail”.
- Section 8(10): an insurer “shall be deemed to have waived any further duty of disclosure of the consumer where it fails to investigate an absent or obviously incomplete answer to a question”. If you left a box half-filled and they issued the policy anyway, that is their problem, not yours, unless the gap was deliberate concealment.
An honest mistake is not a cancelled policy
This is the part that most directly contradicts the kitchen-table warning. Section 9 sets out what are called proportionate remedies, and it distinguishes three situations.
If you answered honestly and with reasonable care but an answer turned out to involve an innocent misrepresentation, section 9(2) says the insurer “shall be required to pay the claim made and shall not be entitled to avoid the contract on the ground that there was a misrepresentation”. Not reduce. Pay.
If the misrepresentation was negligent, the remedy “shall reflect what the insurer would have done had it been aware of the full facts and shall be based on a compensatory and proportionate test”. In practice, under section 9(4)(c), if the insurer would still have covered you but charged more, it may only “reduce proportionately the amount to be paid on a claim”. So if the correct premium would have been double, you get half the claim, not nothing.
Only where an answer involves a fraudulent misrepresentation, under section 9(5), is the insurer entitled to avoid the contract. Even then, section 8(6) lets it use these remedies only if it establishes that the non-disclosure “was an effective cause of the insurer entering into the relevant contract” on the terms it did.
None of this is an argument for being vague on the form. Declare everything you are asked about, every condition, every investigation, every change of medication, and keep a copy of what you submitted. The point is narrower and more useful: if you did that in good faith and something was still recorded imperfectly, a refusal letter saying the policy is void is a claim you are entitled to challenge rather than a verdict you have to accept.
The renewal question
Annual multi-trip policies raise a different worry. You were well in March, you were diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in July, and the renewal falls due in October. Do you have to ring them?
Section 14(1) is clear that the section 8 duty does not oblige a consumer who has already answered to provide additional information at renewal “whether concerning matters that have changed or otherwise, unless the insurer has expressly required the consumer to do so”. If the insurer wants an update, section 14(2) and 14(3) require it to ask a specific question in writing, not a general one, and section 14(4) adds that if you provide nothing in response and keep paying, “it shall be presumed that the information previously provided has not altered”. Separately, section 14(6) requires at least 20 working days’ notice of any change to the terms.
Mid-policy, section 15 reads “material change” clauses narrowly, as covering only changes that take the risk outside what was reasonably contemplated when the contract was made. Even so, the sensible move with a new diagnosis is a short phone call followed by an email confirming what you told them.
The cooling-off right you may not have
Section 11 gives a 14 working day right to cancel an insurance contract after being told it has been concluded. Section 11(3) then removes it: “The right to cancel a contract of insurance under subsection (1) does not apply where the duration of the contract is less than one month.”
A fortnight’s single-trip cover sits squarely inside that exclusion. Separate cancellation rights can still apply to policies bought online or by phone under the distance marketing rules, but do not assume one exists. Read the cancellation clause before you pay, not after.
Why the age cut-off is lawful, and where it stops being
Being told that an annual policy is unavailable past 75, or that a particular destination is off the table past 80, feels like plain discrimination. The Equal Status Act 2000 covers age as a ground, but section 5(2)(d) carves out differences in treatment “in relation to annuities, pensions, insurance policies or any other matters related to the assessment of risk”.
Read the exemption closely, because it has two limbs and both must be satisfied. The treatment must be effected by reference to “actuarial or statistical data obtained from a source on which it is reasonable to rely” or “other relevant underwriting or commercial factors”, and it must be “reasonable having regard to the data or other relevant factors”. An underwriting decision grounded in real data is protected. A blanket refusal with nothing behind it is not automatically covered by the exemption.
If you believe a refusal crosses that line, the procedure is tight. Section 21(2) requires you to notify the provider in writing within two months, and section 21(6) sets a six month limit on referring the case. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission can advise; the referral goes to the Workplace Relations Commission.
What the embassy will not do
There is a persistent assumption that if something goes badly wrong, the State will step in. It is worth reading the Department of Foreign Affairs’ own list of what consular staff cannot do. They cannot “offer legal or medical advice”. They cannot “pay your medical or legal bills (even on a temporary basis)”. They cannot “deal with your insurance company on your behalf”. They can advise and support you, contact your family, and provide a list of English-speaking doctors, lawyers and interpreters, and the Consular Assistance Unit is reachable on +353 1 408 2527.
The scale is not trivial. The Department provided consular assistance in 1,981 new cases in 2025, the fourth consecutive annual increase, and said that 2025 saw the highest number of deaths of Irish citizens overseas it has ever recorded, with more than one in five new cases relating to a death abroad. For bereaved families, the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust in Newry helps with the cost and logistics of bringing someone home, but note the wording of its own remit: it exists to relieve families repatriating a loved one who died abroad “in sudden or tragic circumstances”. A death from a known illness on a planned holiday is exactly the gap a policy is meant to fill.
If the claim is refused
The Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman is free, independent and badly underused. Its Overview of Complaints 2025, published in March 2026, recorded 2,142 insurance complaints, 31% of everything it received and an 18% rise on the 1,818 logged in 2024. Travel insurance came third by product with 241 complaints, behind motor at 968 and private health insurance at 325. The two most common grounds across all insurance complaints were claim handling (553) and rejection of a claim (481).
The Ombudsman can direct a provider to rectify the conduct complained of, whatever that costs, and can direct a compensatory payment of up to €500,000. In 2025 it issued 244 legally binding decisions, with 42 upheld, substantially upheld or partially upheld, carrying a combined €165,950 in compensation. Complaints must generally be made within six years of the conduct, with longer windows available for long-term financial services. Go through the insurer’s own complaints process first, keep every letter, and then go to the FSPO rather than giving up.
Before you buy
- Screenshot or print the completed medical declaration. It is the single most useful document you will own if a claim is queried.
- Check the policy’s definition of a stable or controlled condition, and how many weeks of stability it requires. This is where most pre-existing condition disputes begin.
- Check what happens to cover for a condition that is under investigation or on a waiting list, which is often treated differently from one already diagnosed.
- Check the upper age limit and whether it applies at purchase or at the date of travel.
- Apply for or renew the free European Health Insurance Card through the HSE. It covers medically necessary state-provided care across the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the UK, but the European Commission is blunt that it does not cover private healthcare or “costs such as return flights to your home country”, does not guarantee free services, and “is not an alternative to travel insurance”.
- Put the insurer’s 24-hour assistance number in your phone and in your wallet, and ring it before agreeing to private treatment where you have a choice.
None of this should put anyone off going. Travel in your seventies and eighties is one of the better arguments for the whole project of ageing well, and our earlier guides to travel in your 60s, 70s and beyond and travel health after 50 cover the practical side of getting there well. What has changed is the balance of power at the point where it matters most. You are not a supplicant filling in a form that can be torn up on a technicality. You are a consumer with a statutory right to clear questions, proportionate consequences and a free appeal.
At Críonna Health we spend a lot of time on the gap between what people are entitled to and what they believe they are entitled to. Travel insurance after 70 sits right in the middle of it. Declare everything, keep the paperwork, and know that an honest answer is now protected by statute rather than by the goodwill of whoever opens your file.
📷 Photo by Kit (formerly ConvertKit) on Unsplash
