William Aird (Laois, Fine Gael)

I welcome the witnesses. It is a very exciting day. I am delighted to be a member of this committee. We will be remembered for all time when it comes to January for having given a helping hand to everybody to be in a pension scheme. I wish the scheme well. It is an onerous task to get something like this up and running. It will benefit everybody in the working community. It is very exciting for people starting off in a career. Many people who are half or three quarters of the way through their working careers would love to have had this at the initial stages. It is being set up now. It is an equal spread across. The Government will make the same contribution to everybody, which is very good. Going forward, it will be an incentive for people to save and to continue their standard of living when they retire. At the moment there are huge anomalies in the system. People had to give up work many years ago because when women married it was not permissible to work in sections of the workforce at that time. Those people are now dependent on their spouses for their old-age pension. It is totally wrong. That has to be fixed. This is a very exciting opportunity. I do not know how anybody could not be in favour of this. I am delighted to be a TD to be present here today.

I wish Letterkenny very well. It is getting many jobs out of this. It is a pity it is not coming to Laois. I would be shocking excited altogether if it was coming to Laois. Unfortunately, it is not. When it starts up, a great many people will have questions on it. I hope there will be a special line of communication for all of those people. I thank the officials and the Minister. I look forward to 1 January for the inaugural part of this.