Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Before the witnesses respond, I have some brief questions. I am a new member but when I started on the committee I knew there was a pensions time bomb in Irish Life. Interestingly, Irish Life deals with defined benefit pension schemes for hundreds of other companies but its employees' defined benefit pension scheme was being taken from them. The one comment we could have made to them was that there was a mechanism in the heads of a Bill that might offer them some protection but, as others have said, the mechanism was removed. It is a serious challenge. I appreciate the witnesses appearing before the committee but I have a couple of questions about the collective nature of the way they are representing themselves. Three semi-State organisations are represented here but do they represent others as well?