Mr. David Begg:

I shall respond to Deputy Ryan's comments first. He is quite correct that most, if not all, occupational pension schemes are, as far as I know, the product of trade union and management negotiations. Companies that do not have the collective bargaining remit would be very unlikely to have a defined benefit scheme.

On the anomaly with the IASS, one could perhaps find a better word for it. However, the difficulty I saw, and in respect of which the Deputy and I have had many discussions, was that nearly all pension schemes in the country had a co-ordinated provision by which one's pensionable pay was offset by reference to the social welfare provision. Sometimes it is one times the value of the social welfare provision, but more likely twice that value. The difficulty I found in getting a better result out of all this publicly, leaving aside the willingness, or otherwise, of the company, its investors and shareholders to put money in, was that if one were to legislate on this as a public policy issue, one would have to legislate for a quite unique set of circumstances. Personally, I believed that was unlikely but perhaps others have a different view. Certainly, however, it was very unlikely that one could have allowed for what I describe, particularly in the way it operated because it was a co-ordinated pension under the rules of the scheme if one retired at 65. It was unco-ordinated in practice if one retired short of that age. It was a most extraordinary provision. However, this does not gainsay the fact that it was a very heavy hit for many people, particularly people at the lower end, whose real income would have been reduced significantly as a result of the €12,000 odd associated with the State pension. Nevertheless, this was a quite difficult set of circumstances.

None of us can ignore the fact that the €720 million deficit was enormous. There was no great willingness on the part of the company to put money into the scheme. One of the shareholders - the major shareholder - was said in public to have been against doing anything in this regard. Therefore, it was practically very difficult to try to secure a resolution that would have mitigated the worst effects of the deficit of €720 million. Consider the outcome of a targeted pension to give the same level of co-ordinated benefits.

While everybody is probably dissatisfied with the outcome, it was possibly the least worst option. Regarding the trustees and the strain cost over the year, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that something was missed. These were important additional strains that were put on it, and it should have been copped much earlier.

I will not make any mistake between the two Deputies Daly. In response to Deputy Jim Daly, only 41% in the private sector have a pension scheme. Extending cover is a serious challenge and a universal or mandatory scheme is being contemplated at a policy level. We should make it mandatory. In Britain, there is a "soft mandatory" arrangement. It would not be terribly effective, given that young people do not always consider the value of a pension and they may have many other stresses and strains in their lives. Given the choice between paying one's mortgage or paying into a pension, one might possibly opt out of a pension. A separate organisation, the National Employment Savings Trust, NEST, is trying to improve pension coverage in Britain. It will be interesting to see how successful it is.

Deputy Clare Daly asked many questions. I really believe the Deputy abused privilege in the Dáil in the attacks she made about my role in the IASS.