Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for my voice, which is slightly affected by a flu. I thank the witnesses for attending and for their excellent presentations. My views on the minimum funding standard, the solvency of pension funds and how pensions are calculated are fairly well known. The current provisions in this regard are insane and bear no relationship to reality.

As the Chairman will be aware, I had an amendment to previous legislation passed by the Dáil requiring the Pensions Authority to produce a number of models for the Oireachtas to consider. However, as the legislation has been parked and currently resides somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle, we do not know what the position is in that regard. We will continue to press for the introduction of legislation, however. The accountancy type rules are irrelevant and have resulted, as the witnesses correctly noted, in many defined benefit pension schemes being declared insolvent when they were not insolvent.

The major issue is access and lack of representation. I do not know how many pensioners of semi-State companies there are but I expect the figure is considerable. At this stage in 2018, it is beyond bizarre that such a large group has no avenue through which to make a complaint. Members of private pension schemes have access to the Pensions Ombudsman and various organs, whereas pensioners of semi-State companies have no such access. We must address this in the forthcoming legislation, if we ever get to see it. The Minister has been promising to bring it back to the House for more than 14 months and we will push for it to come before us. We will debate a social welfare Bill that will reflect changes introduced in the budget. I do not see any reason to further delay this legislation, which has lain in abeyance for so long.

As the Chairman pointed out, the heads of a Bill were discussed by the committee. They included certain protections, which in my view were not adequate. When the Bill was published, however, these provisions had disappeared, although the Minister promised to introduce substantial amendments to reflect the earlier heads. We are still waiting to see these amendments. The initial proposals were based to some extent on a Private Members' Bill I introduced to provide substantial protections for people in defined benefit pension schemes. These protections would not have brought the pensions industry to its knees or caused the sky to fall in because they were modelled largely on what had been done in the United Kingdom for defined benefit pension schemes. They were not, therefore, extraordinarily radical. They were, however, a significant step forward when compared with what we have now, namely, virtually nothing.

It is self-defeating nonsense to propose a charge on the assets of the company because of non-payment of pension provisions for a 12 month period. It would not achieve anything and could have unintended consequences that would have the opposite effect of what was intended in the first place. That point was discussed during the debate.

It is extraordinary that despite the representative groups of the semi-State sector having no access to bodies such as the Pensions Ombudsman, decisions by actuaries and trustees that members of certain funds were entitled to a pensions increase have not been implemented. Companies and employers have been able to ignore these decisions. I am familiar, for example, with the position in CIÉ, whose pensioners are not represented today. Under an agreement reached in 1994, two pensions schemes that were heavily in deficit were amalgamated with a scheme that was not in deficit.

As a quid pro quo, the company undertook to pay pension increases to retired staff as salaries increased, but that has not been honoured despite the fact that the actuary recommended it in some cases. I see now that even though the trustees of RTÉ have recommended a 2.5% pension increase, that is not being paid. That strikes me as a bit ironic given what I remember from being involved in a current affairs programme in RTÉ at the time of the controversy concerning Independent Newspapers. I met a large number of journalists, producers and programme managers out there who were bursting with indignation at the carry-on of Independent Newspapers, yet here we have RTÉ refusing to pay retired staff a pension increase of 2.5% as recommended by its own trustees. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in this country of which this is just another example.

We put forward legislation to prevent future Governments of whatever persuasion from imposing levies. As the witnesses correctly pointed out, the fact that a levy can still be imposed is a deterrent and will certainly slow down the auto-enrolment process when it comes in as people will be tempted to opt out. Many people will probably opt out if a levy is imposed at some stage. There were some genuine constitutional difficulties with that and we have committed to resubmit the legislation. I hope we will be able to get all of those things done while the current Dáil is still in existence. We are committed to that. The immediate issue is amendments to the forthcoming legislation to protect people like the witnesses and those in defined benefit pension schemes generally. That legislation has been due here for the past 14 months. We will get ahead with drafting some of those amendments. I thank the witnesses for their suggestions which will help us in the work we are doing in that regard. They can rest assured that we will have the appropriate amendments drafted if there is anything else they want us to include or if they have concrete suggestions apart from what they say here. They should, by all means, send them on to us. We have done our work and are simply waiting for the Minister to republish the legislation so that we can give effect to it.