Mr. Liam Berney:

I completely agree with Mr. Taft that there is a role for collective bargaining here. In one of the sectors where there is a sectoral employment order, which is in construction, there is a mandatory requirement for employers to pay into an occupational pension scheme on behalf of the people they employ. Collective bargaining has produced an occupational pension that sits alongside the State pension for those workers.

It is important to say as well that one of the things we put in our submission to the Commission on Pensions, as did SIPTU, I think, is the roll-out of auto-enrolment in pensions and the introduction of mandatory pension contributions across the economy. One of the statistics that is a real problem for us at the moment is the fact the majority of workers within the private sector have no occupational pensions. That is one of the reasons people might have no choice but to work beyond the age of 65, 66 or whatever the State pension age is set at. The roll-out of auto-enrolment and the requirement, like there is in the construction sector, that employers make a mandatory occupational pension contribution for workers is important.

The question of the universal pension is a complex one. I do not think we could do justice to a discussion on the universal pension in the short time we have available to us here. From the perspective of the ICTU, we favour the model that exists, which is contributions and entitlement.