Mortgage protection insurance cost soared and home sales fell through soared even after cancer all-clear
cancer
in 2019 came as quite a surprise, but the Dublin man took his treatment very seriously and after six months of chemo, radiation and surgery, he was given the all-clear.
He returned to life with a 'newfound vigour', he said, believing he was 'closing one tough chapter'. But when he and his wife began the
process
of trying to buy their own home earlier this year, he quickly realised the disease would continue to have an impact on his life.
'You go into that process very innocently. I've had no issues repaying loans or owing money. But quite quickly, what you learn is ... in order to go through the process of getting the finance in place, you need to get
mortgage
protection insurance in place,' the father of two said.
'But then this Hansel and Gretel paper trail becomes a huge part of your life. They want you to speak to a nurse, they want you to get a letter from your doctor, they want a letter from the consultant whose care you were under.'
READ MORE
He added: 'No matter how much of that paper trail I provided them with, it never seemed to suffice. It seems like the endless actuarial trail that never seems to enable the purchase of a property.'
The 49-year-old and his wife sought
mortgage
protection insurance from four companies, but each of them told him he would be 'deferred' for six months. Several homes they wanted to purchase fell through as a result of this.
Eventually after months of trying, he found one company who would provide him with mortgage insurance, but this was 'weighted' – and his insurance will cost him around 250 per cent more than if he had previously not had cancer.
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On Tuesday, Cabinet agreed to bring forward legislation which will ensure that cancer survivors cannot be discriminated against when it comes to certain insurance products, specifically mortgage protection.
The Programme for Government sets out plans for the legislation, known as the Right to be Forgotten, to require insurers to disregard a cancer diagnosis where treatment ended more than seven years before application, or more than five years if the applicant was under 18 at the time of diagnosis.
In 2022, the
Irish Cancer Society
published research which found only one in four of those surveyed felt they were treated fairly when applying for such products.
In response, in 2023, Insurance Ireland introduced a voluntary code of practice for underwriting mortgage protection insurance for cancer survivors.
Under this, former cancer patients who are seven years cancer-free can apply for a mortgage of under €500,000. A review of the code, published in May 2025, indicated the voluntary code was working, the Department of Finance said.
The move has been welcomed by the Irish Cancer Society, but they are calling for the legislation to ensure financial service providers disregard a cancer diagnosis five years after an applicant has completed their treatment, rather than seven which is currently stipulated in the Central Bank (Amendment) Bill 2025.
Consequently, for people like Mr Breen, the new legislation will have little impact. He is six years all clear, one year shy of when the new legislation will be applicable.
He doesn't yet know whether the cost of his mortgage protection will be reduced once he reaches that seven-year mark.
'It's great to see a focus on this issue, but the challenge is they have to listen to the clinical professionals,' he said.
'What the doctors do is they say 'you're five years clear' and they discharge you, send you off and you think that's the end of it. If doctors say after five years, you're discharged. Why can insurance providers wait until seven years?'
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Irish Times
38 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Letters to the Editor, August 5th: On loving Dublin, men reading books, Gaza, and a radical approach to the nation's health
Sir, – In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and buckling health services, there is a renewed interest in structured programmes of nutrition to bolster prevention and delay the onset of chronic disease. Is it time to prioritise cost-effective prevention programmes to improve the nation's health? It takes a leap of faith to imagine a future where the dominance of junk food and takeaways on every street corner has vanished, replaced by public restaurants owned by communities serving hot, healthy food that doesn't break the bank. Impossible? It's been done before. During the second World War, the UK government opened more than 2,000 British restaurants, serving 600,000 affordable meals a day, designed to meet a third of the people's energy needs. READ MORE As well as food provision, diners could be co-designed to fulfil the social functions of food including dignity, cultural meaning and enjoyment. And they could reduce the burden of domestic food work including the planning, shopping, cooking and washing-up that remains strongly gendered. Public diners would require public investment. But because they serve a lot of food a day, costs could be kept at a minimum while maintaining quality. Imagine public infrastructure in Ireland that dispensed with fast-food takeaways and facilitated public eateries where people of all backgrounds could access nutritious food at affordable prices in their own communities. It's a brilliant model that would transform health and community wellbeing. – Yours, etc, Dr CATHERINE CONLON, Former director human health and nutrition, Safefood Ballintemple, Cork. Public – not bank – holidays Sir, – Your editorial stated: 'We use the terms bank holiday and public holiday interchangeably, but our laws refer only to public holidays' (' The Irish Times view on the August bank holiday: a weekend to rest easy ', Editorial, August 2nd). Bank holidays go back to an earlier time when banks could only close on days specified by law, and the public generally got these days off as well. Banks have long been able to close on whatever days they want, so there are no bank holidays as such any more. The public holidays are now set out in the Public Holidays Act. Yet we continue to refer generally to bank holidays rather than using the correct term, which is public holidays. This has annoyed me for a long time. Now that you have drawn attention to this anomaly, could you lead the way by banning references to bank holidays in your columns and refer only to public holidays? – Yours, etc, MICHAEL G TUTTY, Naas, Co Kildare. More reasons to love Dublin Sir, – Your article on Dublin and reasons to love it was excellent (' Gay Spar, the George's Street Arcade, traffic junctions: 52 reasons to love Dublin right now ', Magazine, August 2nd). I read it the morning after I witnessed the most beautiful outpouring of love for our capital city during Imelda May 's exquisite performance of Peter Sheridan's play, Mother of all the Behans. The audience warmly joined May (as Kathleen Behan) as she sang beautiful versions of Dublin Can be Heaven and Cockles and Mussels. Regarding the latter, I overheard one woman on the way out say she was so moved, she couldn't sing a few of the lines. Well done to all involved. – Yours, etc, LOUISE CROWE, Raheny, Dublin 5. Catastrophic food shortages Sir, – We know from the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, UN agencies and surviving Palestinian journalists that more than 70,000 children under five and 17,000 pregnant women face acute malnutrition in Gaza , while most of the population of more than two million experience catastrophic levels of food shortages. We also know a number of other deeply troubling facts. We know from decades of responding to famines, that when thousands of children are identified as suffering acute malnutrition it is just the tip of the iceberg – of hunger, disease, social breakdown and death. We know the weakest and most vulnerable families rarely make it to hospitals or food drops and don't have the money to buy what little over-priced food might be available in markets if any are still functioning. We know they weaken and die, usually from diseases, as the body fails before starvation gets them. We also know that once malnutrition takes hold in a population, the weakest and most severe cases need special foods and specialist medical care to prevent death and begin a slow recovery. In this situation the emaciated bodies of children or adults cannot cope with foods such as pasta or lentils. Personnel trained in dealing with malnutrition must be able to move freely and safely to identify those in dire need and provide assistance without forcing them to travel long distances or struggle to get food in the midst of violence. The effects of famine have profound multigenerational impacts, including on physical and mental health, on social and economic life and community cohesion. These outcomes are worse where most homes are destroyed and where there is almost no clean water, health, education or social services. In the case of Gaza we know something else; something that is profoundly disturbing. The malnutrition and hunger now stalking Gaza is the outcome of a deliberate policy by Israel, implemented – at least until recent days – with the knowledge and acquiescence of its allies. The creation of the dehumanising and deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the airdrops, and the paltry number of trucks allowed entry every day, are smokescreens to provide an alibi for Israel as a defence against charges of genocide. Even this manufactured starvation, a few kilometres from vast quantities of humanitarian assistance, isn't enough to force Israel's allies to take any action other than in some cases offering conditional recognition to a state of Palestine. Statements won't deter Israel, however. Finally, we also know that as far back as March 28th, 2024, noting that famine was setting in, the International Court of Justice, in a legally binding order, instructed Israel to take all necessary and effective measures to ensure the people of Gaza did not suffer hunger or a humanitarian crisis. The court made this order as it believed, based on evidence before it, that it was plausible the people of Gaza faced a genocide. As the IPC has said, the worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza. Some are guilty of designing this horror, others are complicit in it. – Yours, etc, ÉAMONN MEEHAN, Chair, Sadaka – the Ireland Palestine Alliance, Ballymote, Sligo. Facilitating global greed Sir, – Abie Philbin Bowman makes interesting points about how the past shapes our present in sometimes unexpected but profound ways (' There's more to Irish history than eight centuries of British oppression and failed uprisings ', Opinion, August 3rd). What is also strange, however, is how it does not do this. As a postcolonial country, for example, you would think we would have huge empathy for other countries emerging from colonialism, particularly the African nations. But because we have allowed ourselves to become one of the world's largest tax haven, funnelling hundreds of billions through the country, we deny many poorer countries a part of their tax base to fund housing, education and health. The laudable generosity of the Irish people and strangely, even the Government, in funding international aid is massively undermined by facilitating global greed. Are we, as a people, happy with this, or is it just that we are unaware? – Yours, etc, PAUL CONNOLLY, Cavan. Double road tax? Sir, – I pay motor tax or 'road tax' as Rita O'Brien ( Letters , August 1st) states, however I use my bike far more frequently than my car. Why should I have to pay twice, especially for something that's good for my health and doesn't damage the environment like my car does? – Yours, etc, BARBARA MONAHAN, Clontarf, Dublin 3. Men reading books Sir, – What a timely and a thoughtful article by Maureen Dowd (' Attention, men: Books are sexy, but staring into a phone is not ', World News, August 4th). For the past 12 years or so our men's book club here in Miltown Malbay has been meeting once a month and sharing thoughts on books of every genre. Some recent ones are Poor by Katriona O'Sullivan, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It has become one of my favourite nights of the month and I couldn't recommend it highly enough. – Yours, etc, TIM DENNEHY, Miltown Malbay, Clare. Sir, – I enjoyed Maureen Dowd's article on the value and attractiveness of book-reading, set against the dreary ubiquity of phone scrolling. But the article could have been enhanced if she had noted, along with Ralph Fiennes 's childhood of being read Shakespeare by his mother, a memorable episode some years ago involving the same great actor at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. As Fiennes played Brian Friel's mesmerising and mysterious hero, Frank Hardy in Faith Healer (Friel's greatest play by a country mile), a mobile phone rang out in the darkened theatre one evening. Fiennes asked the owner to turn her phone off. When the phone owner, bizarrely, refused, Fiennes halted his performance. – Yours, etc, CONOR McCARTHY, Monkstown, Co Dublin. An urban sanctuary Sir, – I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the caretakers of St Patrick's Cathedral Park in Dublin 8. As a resident of the inner city, I pass through this park each morning on my way to work and it never fails to lift me. Though I know little about gardening, I deeply admire the artistry and care that goes into maintaining the ever-changing flower beds. This month the mezzanine section is particularly stunning, with grasses bursting like champagne over neat hedges and vivid blue and yellow blooms. To those who make this magic happen: thank you, from me and the many grateful tourists, dog walkers and locals who enjoy this urban sanctuary. – Yours, etc, NIAMH GRIFFIN, Dublin 8. 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Hence, the need to train novice hounds to hunt foxes from an early age. Anyone who claims that foxhunting is just 'nature at play' either doesn't understand the practice or wishes to sanitise the 'unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable', as Oscar Wilde called it. Throughout August, even as people continue to host foxes outside their front or back doors or in their gardens, hundreds of innocent young hounds will be blooded. I hope the Bill to ban foxhunting published by Ruth Coppinger TD will receive the support it deserves when it returns for its next reading in the Dáil. In the meantime, let's make friends with foxes and say no to this barbarism. – Yours, etc, JOHN FITZGERALD, Callan, Co Kilkenny. Works of graffiti Sir, – There are many highly visible examples of graffiti around Dublin that instantly communicate a sense of neglect and dereliction. It appears that the most inaccessible sites seem to have the most attraction for the people who deface our city in such a way. Examples around Dublin 4 include graffiti at rooftop level on Upper Baggot Street and when travelling in the opposite direction on a gable wall on Lower Baggot Street, which has been severely defaced by vandals with a spray can and a complete lack of respect for architectural history. Against this background I was surprised to see The Irish Times Magazine using a photograph of graffiti scrawled in huge letters on a concrete wall to form its main headline. The impression this conveys is that the individual who committed that act of vandalism has now had their defacement condoned and made worthy by making the cover of The Irish Times. – Yours, etc, DERMOTT BARRETT, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. The wills of private citizens Sir, – Why does The Irish Times see fit to devote a considerable amount of space to an article written by two journalists about how much money a private citizen left in his will (' Former Mater Private chief Fergus Clancy leaves €15.8 million estate ', News, August 4th)? Vulgar curiosity is my guess. There is no reason such information needs to be published in a national newspaper – Yours, etc, HUGH PIERCE, Celbridge, Co Kildare. A quiet pint Sir, – Brendan Gleeson laments the fact that he can no longer step into a pub without it turning into 'selfie country' (' Brendan Gleeson: 'I can't go into a pub any more. I really miss it' ', Arts, August 2nd). He might try Finnegan's in Dalkey, where nobody bats an eyelid and a quiet pint can still be enjoyed. – Yours, etc, MAEVE O'HARE, Dalkey, Co Dublin.
Irish Times
a day ago
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‘A slow-moving car crash': Novo Nordisk's troubles keep mounting
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Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Liver cancer: ‘The saddest part is that most of the cases are preventable'
Liver cancer kills more than 700,000 people each year. However, three in five cases could be prevented, according to a comprehensive analysis published in the journal Lancet. The research found that prevention could be accomplished by addressing the disease's major causes – hepatitis B, hepatitis C, alcohol -associated liver disease and liver disease linked to metabolic risk factors such as obesity . With nearly 900,000 new cases globally each year, liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer and the third leading cause of death from cancer. If cases continue to rise at the current rate, the number of new annual diagnoses will almost double, rising to 1.5 million globally in 2050, the study predicted. There are two broad categories of liver cancer – primary liver cancer and metastatic (secondary) liver cancer. About 370 people are diagnosed with primary liver cancer each year in Ireland. It is twice as common in men than it is in women. READ MORE The researchers estimated that liver disease from alcohol use and metabolic dysfunction together would account for nearly a third of new liver cancer cases by 2050. The findings align with what liver specialists have seen in their clinics for years. 'Liver cancer is common. It causes immense suffering and death, and the saddest part for me as a physician is that most of the cases are preventable,' said Dr Brian Lee, an associate professor of medicine, who was not involved in the study. Improved screening, vaccination and treatment in recent years have helped stem viral hepatitis. But the threat of liver cancer from heavy alcohol use and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD, formerly known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, 'has been underrecognised and underestimated,' said Dr Ahmed Kaseb, a professor of gastrointestinal medical oncology. A vast majority of liver cancers arise in people with cirrhosis, says Dr Hashem El-Serag, chairman of the department of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas and one of the authors of the new study. Cirrhosis, or advanced and largely irreversible scarring of the liver, damages healthy tissue and prevents the organ from working normally. [ Doctors share 19 tips for looking after your liver: Don't drink alcohol every day, but do drink coffee, and lose weight Opens in new window ] The hepatitis B and C viruses cause inflammation that, if left untreated, can scar and damage the liver, potentially leading to cirrhosis. And both alcohol and metabolic dysfunction lead to abnormal deposits of fat in the liver, which can also result in inflammation. Dr Lee says the accumulation of fat and inflammation acts as a 'highway' to liver scarring, which in turn can injure DNA and lead to cancer. 'There could be multiple ramps to get on to that highway,' he said. The new paper found that the share of liver cancers resulting from hepatitis B and hepatitis C is expected to drop to 63 per cent in 2050, from 68 per cent in 2022. But the burden of liver cancers resulting from alcohol and MASLD is expected to grow. An estimated four in 10 adults worldwide have MASLD, a condition in which fat builds up in the liver. Risk factors include obesity and Type 2 diabetes. A subset of patients with MASLD will go on to develop an advanced form called metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH, which has been described as a silent killer because it can progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer without being noticed. Current guidance recommends monitoring for liver cancers in patients who have a history of viral hepatitis or established cirrhosis. Patients with MASH typically don't meet that criteria, Dr Kaseb said, but they could have liver scarring without symptoms, and nobody would know. That's why screening for liver disease needs to begin at the primary care level, where cases can easily go undetected, said Dr Mary Rinella, a hepatologist at University of Chicago Medicine and the lead author of guidelines for the management of MASLD. She recommended that doctors use a metric called the Fib-4, which uses routine blood test results to estimate the amount of liver scarring, to screen high-risk patients. These include people who have Type 2 diabetes or obesity with at least one other metabolic risk factor, such as high cholesterol. [ 'A serious threat to public health': Doctors warn about delay to mandatory alcohol health labels Opens in new window ] MASLD is reversible with lifestyle changes, including a healthy diet and increased exercise, and weight-loss drugs have recently been shown to be effective at reversing scarring as well. 'If you stop the reason or the impetus for scarring and injury in the liver, then you're going to have less impetus for the development of cancer,' says Dr Rinella. There is no national liver cancer screening programme in Ireland, so it's important to talk to your doctor about surveillance if you have a liver disease such as hepatitis B or C, genetic haemochromatosis or liver cirrhosis, as the risk of liver cancer is higher. [ Parents facilitating a 16-year-old's 'prinks' is a sign of our weird relationship with alcohol Opens in new window ] Alcohol-related liver disease is also on the rise. In research published in July , Dr Lee and his colleagues showed that the risk of alcohol-related liver disease among heavy drinkers (at least 10 drinks per week for women and 15 for men) in the United States more than doubled between 1999 and 2020, despite similar alcohol use over that period. That suggests that heavy drinkers today may be more sensitive to the effects of alcohol on the liver than those in the past, Dr Lee said. In Ireland, while average alcohol consumption per adult has shown signs of falling, the incidence of binge drinking continues to be pronounced. Drinking heavily and having a metabolic condition such as obesity can independently damage the liver, but patients who fall in both categories are at an especially high risk. These trends are likely to continue. 'Alcohol use is increasing,' says Dr Rinella. 'Obesity and diabetes are increasing.' 'I expect that we're going to continue to see a high burden of liver disease,' she added. – This article originally appeared in the New York Times
