Family get €6k bill to return body after insurance issues

The grieving family of a woman who died on holiday was hit with a €6,000 bill to release her body from airport storage after a last-minute problem with her travel insurance.

Paula Healy’s brother, Tony Nation, said the family felt as if her body was “held hostage, held to ransom” until they paid up.

“If we had known this last week, we would have moved heaven and earth to resolve it,” he said.

He urged people to check the small print of travel insurance policies after the issue arose on the final leg of her sad journey home.

Mr Nation told The Opinion Line on Cork’s 96fm yesterday that Paula, a mother-of-three from Cork, spent two years planning a dream holiday with her husband in Greece to celebrate her 50th birthday and their 30th wedding anniversary.

But the dream turned to tragedy last Monday week when she died suddenly, soon after arriving on Mykonos Island.

Her family sent Paula’s medical records to the Greek authorities which showed she had high blood pressure and was overweight, but a post mortem proved inconclusive.

As Paula’s remains were being flown from Athens to Heathrow on Monday, the travel insurance company contacted her family claiming her weight and blood pressure issues had not been disclosed and, as a result, the policy was void. The family missed a midnight deadline to pay a €6,000 bill and Paula’s remains were placed in airport storage overnight.

“We thought the whole thing was covered by the insurance. Everything seemed to be in order last week,” Mr Nation said.

“If we had known this sooner, we could have dealt with it. But it was being handled by an underwriter in Germany. We were just a number on a piece of paper somewhere, and it was just ‘claim denied’.”

He accepted Paula didn’t declare her high blood pressure issue, but said she had been declared medically fit just a few weeks ago.

The money was paid by Tuesday and Paula’s body arrived at Cork Airport that night, where her airport work colleagues provided a guard of honour. A post mortem was due to be performed on her remains in Cork yesterday.

The Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust has now stepped in to reimburse the family.