Frank Feighan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I do not profess to be an expert on pensions. I come from a self-employed background and I employed between 30 and 50 people. They were not members of a union. My knowledge of unions was not great but if a worker had wanted to be a member of a union, I would have been only too happy. The business closed five or six years ago and the staff got their entitlements.

As self-employed people, like most, we lost everything. My mother did not have a pension. We do not have pension. That is the case for the tens of thousands of self-employed around the country. As a pension scheme, at the time, rightly or wrongly, self-employed people bought bank shares in AIB or Bank of Ireland. That was one's pension and one's lump sum. Those bank shares are worth nothing. We are here today talking about pensions, and rightly so, but there are tens of thousands of self-employed people who have no pension and no rights. I want to put that on the record.

I am not sure what we can do as a committee. ESB, Aer Lingus and Coillte are rightly here highlighting an issue but we are the transport committee. We are not the pensions board. I have listened to ascertain what we can do. Mr. Cortes stated that the union wants independent investigations from the Minister. That sounds appropriate and perhaps, as a committee, we should call for that.

I saw a press report stating that SIPTU wrote to CIÉ to seek staff meetings. Have staff meetings caused passengers disruption? I take a bus to the Houses and a train home to Sligo. I do not want passengers to become collateral damage in the context of an issue that could resolved with the assistance of the Pensions Authority or some other body.

I am confused about what changing the scheme rules regarding retirement age to align with actual retirement experience means. Could the witnesses elaborate on capping pensionable pay at the greater of 3.3 times State benefit or current pay levels? This committee can make recommendations. Everyone is coming in here today and it highlights an issue that must be resolved but I am not sure what we, as a committee, can do. Perhaps the witnesses can tell us what we can do. I am just not sure. We will all feel good about ourselves outside but where will it end up after this? People call on Ministers to intervene and CIÉ and CIÉ workers work extremely hard and provide a great service. Forgive me, I come from a self-employed background. Are we then talking about having ESB in next week, Aer Lingus the week after and Coillte the week after that? We, as a transport committee, would be dealing with pensions when there are many other issues with which we could be dealing. I am far more informed as a result of this meeting than I have been in the past five years so if it is just this one thing, it is quite important.