Mr. Robert Nicholson:

On data for individuals, and their being able to see their contributions and so on, all sorts of financial technology platforms exist that do all sorts of things for individuals on their mobile phones and televisions at home to allow them to see and project in a very colourful way the impact their savings are having over the longer term. We would see that as a fundamental part of the system. There is an extra benefit, which we got from New Zealand. In some systems, including Ireland, an individual does not necessarily see their contribution being removed from payroll into the pension scheme and as a result, during the financial crisis, for instance, some employers got themselves into sticky situations where the employees' contribution did not hit their pension pot. Using this system with a central processing agency, CPA, and real time data from revenue which will come in in January 2019, an individual will be able to log and track their money through the CPA into the fund and see it for them selves. Communications and technology are certainly a central element.

Some 240,000, only 30%, of self employed populations have pensions. It is a very difficult group to get a real understanding of because one self employed person will be entirely different from another in how their business is structured, the sorts of capital requirements they have and so on. No system we have looked at has managed to cater within the orthodox main system for the self employed. We are asking for ideas on it. We see the question of bogus self-employment as something that is more related to employment issues and should be addressed through that. If they are really employees, they should be captured within the automatic enrolment system. It is something to keep an eye on but something that other jurisdictions have struggled with.

On the individual maintenance charge, at present the individual goes into the system. If they opt out after seven or eight months they get their contribution back less the maintenance charge. The reason for that is that it is more expensive to reroute that very small maintenance charge back to the individual from the fund through the CPA. Take someone on €25,000 per annum, which is the kind of population that we are discussing, making 1% of contribution and 0.25% of that goes to a charge, that is around €1 or very marginally more than that after seven or eight months. Administratively, there is not really a reason to hand that back. It would cost more to do that than the value would be to the individual. The administrative cost of doing this would have to fall to somebody and would most likely fall to the other members who stay in the system because the CPA would have to be self-financing to a degree.