Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is with the pensions board.

Unlike what I read in the newspapers, the matter does not have anything to do with the Department of Social Protection. There is an issue with the ESB management about the description of the designation of the pension fund as either defined benefit or defined contribution. That is a matter for the workers and the ESB, so I do not want to comment on that.

There are other issues. As the Senator said, the ESB has a significant pension scheme. Huge efforts have been made by the management, the workers, the trustees and the workers representatives in the trade unions to address what was a significant deficit. Up to the end of 2012 - this is the good news, although I do not know how much it affects the ESB - equity investments of DB schemes grew on average by 11%. Members will recall that when the world stock markets crashed, the value of the underlying investments in many DB schemes in Ireland fell dramatically. We then had the bank crash and German bond prices went up because they were considered to be the most secure. That meant that someone coming to retirement who wanted to buy a pension had to buy a very expensive German product.

We have done a lot of work to develop sovereign annuities. The member may wish to put down a question on that. It has been a positive development. Different pension schemes have invested €400 million in Irish sovereign annuities. I will not refer to the ESB position on that because it is a matter of detail I cannot comment on.

I have written down the words "endorsed" and "improvement" but I cannot remember to what those words relate.