Ms Jacqueline Thornton:

I will take the Chairman's last question first. I would hope that that headline was not behind a change in public policy. I would hope that the legislators and the Department are able to look beyond that and look at the evidence that is actually presented when they actually review the information in the private pension market. I do not recognise that €6 in every €10 is going in charges. Our members do not recognise that and we were clear about that at the time. That is not a fee we recognise. I have seen some of those headlines and I have seen some of the reports. We have looked at the evidence in it and at the evidence from our own members. It looks as though some of those figures - if I can phrase this correctly - are based on assuming the maximum available fees for everything involved in a pension, be that the advice on the pension, the asset under management charge, policy fees, contribution charges or investment charges. It seems to assume that the maximum charge possible permitted under the regulations is taken. We have a very competitive private pension market in Ireland. I do not believe I have ever seen, and if I have it is very rare, maximum fees being taken on a pension. The fees that are taken on a pension are commensurate with the services that are provided for that pension. That will differ widely across what the individual or what the employer wants. For a standard occupational scheme, with a default choice and with the employer doing most of the information and meeting most of their obligations, one can expect the charges to be quite low. In some instances, the reduction in yields, which is what is used to measure the impact of pension charges on a product, can be lower than what the proposed caps on auto-enrolment are. This is particularly relevant for very large schemes. It is like everything, however, that the more services provided by the pension provider, the more cost is involved with that and the more there is an impact in the reduction in yield of the pension. That gets to be agreed. For an occupational scheme it is agreed between the employer and the pension provider. For a personal scheme it is agreed between the individual and the pension provider as to what they are going to do for the services.

On the Chairman's point on transparency, I do not believe one would meet anybody who works in pensions who would disagree that more transparency is needed in that area. It is widely acknowledged. It is very complicated. The way the reduction in yields is relayed to an individual is through the statement of reasonable projection, the SORP. These are very complicated actuarial calculations. They are very difficult to understand even for those of us who work in the pensions environment. I am not an actuary. I read my pension summary and go "Oh, okay, I will come back to it later". We would definitely agree that there are some measures needed to make pensions more understandable. The information needs to be clearer. There is a lot of disclosure that goes to a person when he or she takes out a pension. I am sure that members will know that it is a lot of information and much of it is quite legalistic because it has to be. There is a lot of work to be done on disclosure and making information about pensions clearer to individuals. There is also a lot of work to be done around financial education for all, in order to understand a pension is, how it works, and the fact that the person is actually paying himself or herself. On the point about auto-enrolment, there are individuals who will see this as an extra tax or about losing income, when actually it is not about that. At the end of the day it is about the person paying his or her future self. It is about people making sure that when they get to the end of their working life they have a standard of living in retirement that does not drop when they stop working.

The Chairman's first question was about timelines, which is an interesting question. We are all aware that the setting up does involve significant cost. Even if the general scheme changes and we do go to piggyback on the existing pension infrastructure, there will be changes that need to be done. Ultimately, that would depend upon what the final legislation says.

When the SSIA savings plan was in place, some of our members did provide access to an investment-based SSIA plan. Some of our members may well have the functionality in their system already and others may have to build it. Ultimately, however, the timeline will depend on what the final requirements are so it would be disingenuous for me to sit here and say it will be done in two years or in 12 months because we do not know until we see the final rules what the build is going to take.