Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

They are. I advise the Deputy that Revenue has published a considerable amount of information and detailed guidance about the standard fund threshold regime. Therefore, there is no requirement for an additional report as has been suggested and the policy position on the matter is well settled.

The State offers extremely broad pension relief to encourage individuals to save to ensure they will have sufficient income for use in their retirement. The standard fund threshold operates to cap the amount of tax relief for pension savings that are utilised by high earners. In this way it targets excessive pension accrual and the overfunding of supplementary pension provisions on values over €2 million.

For example, in the event that a married couple gets divorced, there may be a court ordered legal division of their assets. In the case of a pension, there could be a pension adjustment order that sets out the terms of how the pension benefits are to be apportioned between the now divorced individuals. When applying the standard fund threshold to determine whether a chargeable excess exists on the pension fund, in accordance with section 7870 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, the pension fund is treated as a single asset and the pension adjustment order is to be ignored for the purposes of determining whether the standard fund threshold has been exceeded. The order is, however, taken into account when determining the portion of any chargeable excess that is payable by each spouse.

To give the full picture of the types of relief beyond the standard fund threshold, I also note that where married couples divorce or separate and civil partners separate, each former spouse or civil partner may be entitled to a separate and distinct tax free lump sum of up to €200,000 in respect of a lump sum which is the subject of a pension adjustment order, something that may not necessarily be available to a married couple or civil partners. The specific disregard of the pension adjustment order is a justified anti avoidance measure that is designed to prevent an individual whose pension is subject to such an order from availing of further tax relief at significant additional cost to the Exchequer. It has never been the case that a divorce or separation would lead to each former spouse or civil partner getting a standard fund threshold in cases where there was previously only one.

This would lead to a significant cost that would benefit a very small number of individuals who, in the eyes of many, would be seen as being wealthy. The funding for and accrual of pension benefits for the vast majority of individuals in pension saving arrangements are unaffected by the standard fund threshold scheme. Given that we need to concentrate our resources to deal with many of the issues that will arise from the road map of pension reform, that is where we should put the resources of the State as opposed to dealing with this matter.

For that reason I do not accept the proposed amendment.