How much life insurance do I need in Ireland?

How do advisers actually calculate it?

The professional method is called a needs analysis, and it is simpler than the name suggests: add up what your death would cost your household, subtract what is already in place, and insure the gap. In practice that resolves into three questions, asked in order. The first two set the size of the cover; the third — unique to this article, because it comes from our Tax Guide — makes sure the full amount actually reaches your family.

Question one: what must be cleared?

Debts should not outlive the person who carried them. The mortgage leads the list — in Ireland, mortgage protection on a home loan is required by law and is priced to track the falling balance, and our research on the standard schedule shows it errs on your side, holding cover on average around €14,000 *above* a modern 4% mortgage balance through the term. Add any other loans that would fall to the household, and a modest buffer for the costs that arrive with a death itself. For a family with a €300,000 mortgage, question one's answer is, to a first approximation, €300,000 — and the required policy is usually already in place.

Question two: what must be replaced?

Income, for the years someone depends on it. The first-pass arithmetic is honest and simple: the annual amount your household would need without your earnings, multiplied by the years until your youngest dependant is financially independent, minus what already exists — employer death-in-service benefit (often a multiple of salary; it is on your benefits statement), existing policies, and modest State survivor supports. Two Irish realities push this number later and larger than a generation ago: mortgages now commonly run 35 years, and children arrive and stay dependent later — so set the term to actual independence, not a round number. As an illustration only: a family needing €40,000 a year for fifteen years starts at €600,000, and death-in-service of, say, €240,000 brings the insured gap to €360,000 of level term cover.

Question three: how much will actually arrive?

This is the layer generic calculators ignore, and it is where the answer can silently shrink by a third. Cover is only as good as the net amount that lands, and in Ireland that is decided by tax and ownership, both fixed — free of charge — at application.

For married couples and civil partners, the news is complete: everything passing between spouses and civil partners is exempt from inheritance tax without limit, so no grossing-up is needed. For cover intended for children, each child can receive €400,000 tax-free from a parent (as at 2026); above that, inheritance tax at 33% applies — our Tax Guide's worked case shows €400,000 of intended benefit requiring €591,000 of ordinary cover once the tax is fed back in, *or* the same €400,000 arriving whole through proper configuration at the outset. For unmarried couples, the tax system's €20,000 stranger threshold makes ownership decisive: the guide's opening case study shows the same €260,000 of cover producing a €42,900 bill in the standard joint set-up and €0 when each partner owns a policy on the other and pays their own premium.

What does that look like for a typical family?

Put the three questions together for an illustrative couple: a €300,000 mortgage, two young children, one main income of €60,000. Question one is answered by the mortgage protection policy already required for the loan. Question two, on the arithmetic above, suggests roughly €360,000 of level term cover running to the youngest child's independence. Question three costs nothing: they are married, so every euro arrives exempt — no grossing-up required. The whole exercise takes an adviser about twenty minutes, and because the five Irish life offices price the same cover differently — with our research showing lender-channel policies typically 20–30% dearer than the cheapest equivalent — the final step is always a whole-of-market comparison rather than the first quote offered.

The bottom line

How much life insurance you need in Ireland is not a multiple pulled from the air: it is your debts cleared, your income replaced for the dependency years, netted against what you already hold, and configured so the full amount arrives untaxed. Every part of that sentence is checkable, most of it is free to optimise, and all of it is exactly what a twenty-minute whole-of-market review is for.