Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for not being present for the entire presentation given by the witnesses, as I was discussing a community employment scheme with the Minister in the Chamber. I am interested in some of the points made by the Irish Brokers Association and I will take up an offer it has made to meet to discuss further the points its representatives have made here and at other times regarding the issue of pensions. One point made was the cost to the State of the tax relief for pensions does not amount to €2.9 billion. What is the cost, as calculated by the Irish Brokers Association? A number of factors have been listed as disincentives for pension funds remaining in Ireland and seven changes that have occurred in recent years were outlined. One point that has been made on an ongoing basis in this committee concerns the disincentive, to those who have been contributing to their pension funds, of the cost of administration, that is, what comes out of the money they put in. The point is that in Ireland, the pension industry takes a far greater lump out of what is invested. I ask the Irish Brokers Association to elaborate on this point and whether the comparison is wrong, as that would be useful.

I am unsure whether the departmental officials referred to the European Union's discussion paper indicating the Union's future direction. At a previous meeting on pensions that pertained to defined contribution and defined benefit schemes in particular, I made the point that if one is in work but one's job closes and moves somewhere else within the European Union, the European Globalisation Adjustment fund is available. I asked whether such a fund or its equivalent could be created in the case of a company that closed and moved out of Ireland but which still existed or in the case of a global company that had other outputs or branches in the rest of Europe. Such a fund would enable one to make a charge on that company for some type of compensation for its withdrawal from Ireland on behalf in particular of deferred members and pensioners. Members dealt with this issue when discussing the changes to the defined benefits scheme in the most recent legislation earlier last year.