Dr. Seán Healy:

I will deal with the pension issue. On the Deputy's suggestion to double the level of the universal pension, phase out the private pension industry and pay for it by eliminating reliefs, if we could double the level of the pension and pay for it by eliminating reliefs and so on, the Deputy would find no bigger supporter of that proposal than us because we would be positive in support of phasing out any kind of support for the private pension industry. There has been a great degree of rip-off in the private pension industry over decades and the major beneficiaries have been those in the pensions industry, not the people who drew pensions or were depending on them. We made a proposal previously that the State might invest a serious amount in pensions and make the universal payment of pensions as strong as possible and, on the other side, provide capacity for people if they want to invest in their pensions, but the State would do it and all the charges that go to fund the private pensions industry would be eliminated. The State would run this through the vehicle already in place for handling State money and so on. There might be a possibility of doing something in that context and that would need to be examined. I would have no problem with it and would be more concerned about how much we could do, what would be the value of the remainder of the tax breaks and so on. I would need to examine those to ascertain what would be possible. I would have no problem with increasing it, funding it in the way the Deputy suggests and eliminating support for the private pensions industry because it has a negative impact.