A very hard call and in fact non in much safer than another.
At the moment it doesn't look like Ireland will default. And it might be much more likely that Ireland will get a bailout similar to cyprus than defaulting. But a cyprus deal for Ireland will cost everyone money, regardless.
The Life companies are no banks. They take your money and work with it. For example they buy bonds. Some of the better ones maybe have an active managed fund where they invest in diversified and actively changing assets on demand and therefore make a good profit for them and for you. I have very poor experience with Irish life who take big fees and do nothing and watch your money burning. If it goes the hard way, your money is with life companies not much safer than holding your own bonds, cause there is the chance they bought all the rubbish from the market that goes down and you don't have control about it. + you never know what kind of levies /taxes / etc will be imposed on life funds in the future again.
Unless you can participate on a job backed life fund where your employer will contribute (which will give a slight benefit) and where it will get tax deduction, you might end up paying a pretty high fee for each contribution and annually for management. (usually a few %)
You might consider to do the job yourself and get a broker / online broker and trade yourself with what you believe is valuable. High risk and you need to stay on top yourself but you might be able to react fast when things go the other way around. Stay away from "spread trading" cause that's betting on share values. Nothing sustainable in there.
In both above ways your money is not protected by the 100k protection fund (if the money is gone it's definitely gone)