A young woman has said she felt “less than” to receive a mortgage protection quote of €290 per month, with the bulk of the cost arising from her having had cancer six years ago.

Konstantina Kalliontzi (26) is living in a modular home in someone’s back garden at a monthly cost of €1,150. She was delighted that she and her partner could save enough to purchase their first home together in Donabate, north Dublin.

However, the tech worker was told a basic monthly figure of €30 as insurance protection for their loan would have to be topped up by €250 on account of her past cancer. The total monthly figure comes to €289.97, including a policy fee and Government levy.

Mortgage protection insurance is a life insurance policy that pays off a borrower’s mortgage in full if they or a co-borrower dies. Extra costs can be added to premiums due to perceived higher risks, such as a policyholder’s age, pre-existing health conditions, smoking habit or dangerous job.

Kalliontzi says receiving such a high quote made her feel “like it is very difficult to be seen on the same level as others, as ultimately you are judged on something you cannot control”.

At the age of 20, she was diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that had a survival rate of about 95 per cent. She was studying at University College Dublin and says it felt “insane” to be going through cancer treatment.

“Once you do the treatment, it should be fine, which was the case for me, thankfully,” she says.

After four months’ therapy, there were no signs of the cancer returning and medics treated her as healthy. That is not the case in other walks of life, she says, adding she feels she has been treated as “subhuman” under some policies.

She says she checked with many insurers, and AIB Life was the only provider to offer her a mortgage protection quote.

She had been concerned throughout the buying process that her history with cancer could become an issue. She says she mentioned her diagnosis to her mortgage provider and was told it should not be an issue, but at the end of the process, it was “an entirely different story”.

“I honestly spent the whole day that day [of policy offer] feeling less than. It put me down,” she says. “Ultimately, it brought me back to when I was sick.”

Under a voluntary code of practice, eight mortgage protection insurers ignore a person’s cancer diagnosis for loans of up to €500,000 if their treatment ended at least seven years beforehand.

Last month, the Government announced plans to legislate a “right to be forgotten” that would require insurers to disregard a person’s past cancer once they have been in remission for five years. The maximum loan covered under this will rise to €650,000.

The Irish Cancer Society, which has since 2021 campaigned for this change, said cancer survivors have faced “endless paperwork trails and hurdles” to accessing fundamental financial services such as mortgage protection, “without which they cannot access a mortgage”.

The society’s director of advocacy, Steve Dempsey, said the Government’s announcement of a change is a “major step forward” and he looks forward to the legislation being enacted “as quickly as possible”.

Kalliontzi hopes the law will apply before her new two-bed terrace is completed over the summer. Otherwise, she says, she will have to proceed with the original quote, which falls under a two-year contract.

An AIB spokesman said the institution is “conscious” of the challenges customers can face after serious illness and is “committed to engaging constructively and empathetically with anyone who is in such circumstances”. He said AIB works closely with insurance partners, so cover may be offered on specific terms rather than declined.

There are limited and exceptional circumstances where the need for mortgage protection insurance can be waived, the spokesman added.