Top judge urges financials to show ‘compassion’

The President of the High Court has said it should not be "impossible" for financial organisations to show "empathy and understanding" in situations such as where a man diagnosed with heart disease got no payment from his insurer, despite having critical illness cover for conditions including heart attack and stroke.

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns said it seemed to him that “justice would warrant a restitution” of some degree of the payments made by the “hard-working Philomena and Thomas Geoghegan over 11 years under their joint policy taken out with Progressive Life Assurance in 1998.

Counsel for the company, now Irish Life Assurance plc, said the claim is a reinsured claim and wanted time to take instructions from a reinsurer based overseas.