Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to respond because I need to clear up some issues. I asked the same questions that each of the Deputies did when I went through this in detail. Although it seemed like a fit, when you look into it and consider it carefully, we are setting up a new, separate State body that will manage and take participants' money and it will be solely dedicated to looking after that. The NTMA invests State money in the international stock market and uses commercial investment managers from private industry to do this. It does not make those investment decisions itself; it uses commercial investment managers to do it and that is exactly what NAERSA is going to do. It will do exactly the same. It will collect the money and give it to industry through investment managers and that is how it will be invested. It is the exact same principle that the NTMA uses.

There is no money going to the pension industry. That is misinformation. There is no money going to it. NAERSA is the body that the Government is setting up. It is a completely independent agency. It will collect the money from all the participants in the automatic enrolment system. It will come through the payroll deductions and will go to NAERSA. It will then invest it in the exact same way as the NTMA invests State money in the international stock markets. I wish to be clear on that.

We do not feel that the NTMA is the appropriate institution for the management of the retirement savings funds collected. The NTMA manages State money and it does not have the systems, the processes, the knowledge or the experience to manage the individual savings and the investment accounts or to conduct the administration of those over many decades. We are talking about running an accounts system for 800,000 people for 40 years with daily transactions. A lot of people will have the deductions on a weekly basis. NAERSA will manage all that. Revenue will deduct it and NAERSA will take that money and manage it. It will also be responsible to the members of the scheme to give them the information they want and to give them statements on what their pots are worth and everything else. It will then invest it on behalf of those members. Its focus is entirely on the members of the scheme.

To give this task to the NTMA would be to add something very new to its long list of existing functions. The Government is of the view that auto-enrolment is so important that it needs to have a dedicated expert function and therefore, it has chosen to establish this new body for that purpose. That is why it is so important that is has its own independent agency, which is properly regulated and constituted and whose sole purpose is to look after the interests of the members of that scheme.