Mr. Matt Kelly:

What this committee can do most effectively is tackle the minimum funding standard. The minimum funding standard is there to be amended in the Bill currently before the Dáil. As Teachta O'Dea stated, the minimum funding standard affects the liabilities of pension schemes. The liabilities of pension schemes are used as blocks.

On the other point about actuarial opinion, we would see actuarial opinion where assumptions are made on facts. Assumptions are made when we do not know what is going to happen but when assumptions are made in the full knowledge that there is a pension freeze in place for at least ten years, that puts an extra liability of approximately €700 million on the ESB pension fund, which is the one I am familiar with. Actuarial opinion decided last year that those of us in the ESB scheme will live longer than everybody else in the country and thereby lumped a huge liability of an extra hundreds of millions of euro into the pension fund. It has been reduced this year, although I do not know the reason. Perhaps it is because we have highlighted the problem.

We believe employers have too big an influence on allegedly independent boards of trustees.

The people appointed to boards of trustees by employers are generally highly placed individuals in the companies. Whereas the trustees are very assiduous in not revealing information to the members we do not know how much information goes back to the employers. This is something the committee might look at in the context of the IORP II directive that must be in law in the State by 13 January. I do not know whether it is proposed to implement the directive via the pensions Bill or from where it will come. I have not seen it mentioned anywhere. Again, the State will be in breach of an EU directive if it is not in legislation by mid-January.