Ms Roma Burke:

Deputy Kerrane asked a couple of questions. Our role is an advisory one to the Minister. Effectively, what that means at the day-to-day level is that where the Department of Social Protection is working on various projects such as auto-enrolment, the Pensions Council is called on to provide input, whether expert industry insights or just generally being practical about something.

There has been much discussion on various details of auto-enrolment and how it might work in practice. It is absolutely right that one of the key things is not just putting the whole mechanism and machine into operation. It is getting people to understand what is going on and take an interest in it and feel it is something worthwhile to do. Being in a scheme like this is very worthwhile. People benefit from it. They benefit from employer contributions and a State contribution. There are various ways of disclosing information to people. There is disclosing it and there is making it engaging. At present, while a lot of information is available to people saving for retirement it is effective to a certain extent. Where people get a statement on an annual basis and charges are expressed in terms of a percentage a couple of pages into a document, it is not particularly conducive to getting a handle on what is going on and understanding how it will impact retirement goals. The other side of this is using tools such as apps and the Internet, and using clever people such as those we have in this call today who are good at communications, to make this connection with individuals.

Something coming out of the IORP II directive is that until now pension benefit statements used to have to be issued on a paper basis. People got a piece of paper in the post. From now on this can be done electronically. Email addresses and other ways to communicate with people saving for retirement give opportunities to undertake other initiatives to get the message across effectively to people. This is something that should certainly be encouraged. It is a very cost efficient way of communicating with people. If the State is putting the effort into helping people save for retirement it should want to put in something people are proud of and think is good to do. This is something that will feature. It has been raised at our discussions in council meetings. It is not just about providing information. It is making it engaging to the people who are using a system such as auto-enrolment and other retirement savings vehicles.

A question was asked about the commission. I am a member of the commission and today I am here in my role as a member of the Pensions Council. The commission has done its work in line with its terms of reference. The report is due to be issued to the Minister, it is almost there. When she gets it I am sure she will have some thoughts on it and we will share it with everybody else. An awful lot of work has been done by the commission and I am very glad to be a member of it.