Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 October 2020

Public Accounts Committee

2019 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 11 - Office of Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Vote 12 – Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Chapter 3 - Vote Accounting and Budget Management
Chapter 4 - Accounting for Capital Assets
Chapter 5 - Accounting for Allied Services

11:30 am

Mr. Robert Watt:

We review it every year. We go through the assumptions that we made and we look at the number of people who are eligible for retirement. We try to get a sense of what we think the retirements will be. It is a net position. It is the new retirements, plus deaths, people who then leave the scheme. There are different elements. We looked at other countries. It is a difficult challenge to estimate on an ongoing basis the numbers of people who retire. On the lump sum variation, there are slight variations in the average lump sum, so that accounts for some of it, but the actual numbers can have a big impact on A.5, the part of the Vote which deals with the lump sum.