Insurance Ireland has submitted its Pre-Budget Submission for 2024. Insurance Ireland is proposing the prioritisation of six key policy measures including:

1. Revitalising Ireland as a home for international insurers and reinsurers – create a strategy for Ireland to draw insurance and reinsurance investment to Ireland by actioning the following measures:
   1. Create and promote a one-stop-shop for investments into the (re)insurance market
   2. Address the talent crisis
   3. Attract investments in (unregulated) support services
   4. Include (re)insurance in Free-Trade Agreements and complement with Memoranda of Understanding
2. A Transparent and Sustainable Pensions Environment – a regulatory framework promoting pensions which ensures adequate retirement income for the Irish people through sufficient contributions, strong returns, leveraging the experience and the expertise of the existing pension infrastructure and providers currently operating successfully in the Irish market:
   1. Further clarity and equity in the rollout of the Automatic Enrolment (AE) system – ensure strong consumer protection regulation to be applicable to the AE system and level-playing field between occupational pension schemes and AE
   2. Review and make changes to the current level of the Standard Fund Threshold (SFT) – review and make the necessary changes to the SFT regime, especially with regard to increasing the limit of the SFT
3. Sustainable Finance – deliver targeted policies and concrete measures to close the sustainability investment gap, and a regulatory environment enabling insurers to maximise their investment potential in this area. Regulations must support insurers’ long-term models, avoiding unnecessary investment barriers, to drive sustainable economic growth;
4. Joined up approach to Financial Literacy – improving financial literacy cannot be done until regulatory and legislative rules change to support different ways of explaining how financial products work, otherwise, the only real solution is to educate consumers in dealing with complicated and legalistic explanations
5. Effective Taxation Measures – make strategic and efficient changes to enduring taxation measures to allow insurers and consumers to operate effectively in the Irish insurance market and beyond:
   1. Participation Exemption for Foreign Branches – ensure that the introduction of a participation exemption for branches is introduced in a way that allows a reduction in the complexity, administrative burden and cost of doing business in Ireland;
   2. Equalising the taxation treatment of financial products with similar objectives – stimulate long-term savings and investments and encourage participation in retail markets by equalising the tax treatment of Life Assurance Exit Tax (LAET), Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and Deposit Interest Retention Tax (DIRT) and removing the penalising 1% Life Assurance Levy;
   3. Tax Relief at Source for Health Insurance – to maintain sustainability in the health insurance market, retain tax relief at source for private health insurance.
6. Removal of Benefit in Kind tax on corporate dental insurance – expand dental coverage for Irish workers and their families by eliminating the Benefits-In-Kind tax on corporate-paid dental insurance benefits.

Pre-Budget Submission 2025

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