Mr. Robert Nicholson:

It is envisaged that the central processing authority would be a statutory agency and would report into a Department. The degree to which that would underpin the savings of individuals is perhaps a different question but its overall responsibility would be as a statutory agency answerable to a Department.

In terms of age of access, we suggested the age of 68 based on the fact that retirement savings are really designed to provide for individuals to cover their living costs and continue to have income in retirement. People are now living to an average age of 82, with a slight difference depending on gender. We took the principle that if individuals save to try to achieve that objective, it is reasonable to maintain the spending of that in the retirement window if they are being funded by the State and employers. We are frankly open as to what that window is, but we thought that linking it to the State pension age was a nice hook, connecting it to the culturally normal age of retirement. We are open to discussing it.