Mr. Liam Berney:

Small employers with five or six employees and a small retail business do not, typically, make pension schemes available and do not make a pension contribution on behalf of their employees. That is what has led to low pension coverage. It is not as if people made the deliberate choice not to make a contribution to a pension scheme. No pension scheme was available to them. This proposal seeks to raise the coverage of second tier occupational pension schemes, particularly within the private sector. It is not as simple as saying people made economic choices about where they spent their money. If people had the option of an occupational scheme in their employment, they would have availed of it, but because employers were not required to make it available to them, making a contribution was not available to employees. It is not as simple as that.