NEW LAWS PREVENTING insurance companies from using cancer survivors’ medical history against them have come into effect.

The legislation means insurers will be required to disregard cancer-related medical history when a person applying for mortgage protection insurance has completed active cancer treatment for five years and been in complete remission for five years.

Campaigners have long sought the ‘right to be forgotten’.

Survivors previously told The Journal about the practical barriers their diagnoses caused when buying and insuring their home.

The new provisions apply to mortgage protection insurance for a principal private residence, up to a value of €650,000.

It also reduces the end of active cancer treatment period and remission period to five years regardless of age at diagnosis, and increases the cover threshold.

In 2023, the representative body for insurers, Insurance Ireland, announced a new code of practice that outlined that insurers should disregard cancer diagnoses where treatment had ended more than seven years before an application. Under that voluntary code, cancer diagnoses were disregarded after seven years from treatment completion, or after five years when the individual was under 18 at diagnosis, for mortgage protection insurance up to €500,000.

The new legislation, which came into effect today, expands on the voluntary code and gives consumers greater protections by placing it on a statutory footing for the first time.

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Insurance Ireland welcomed the change and said a previous cancer diagnosis shouldn’t create unnecessary barriers for people.

Tánaiste Simon Harris previously described the legislation as a “major milestone” in delivering statutory protections for survivors.