Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection

General Scheme of the Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System Bill: Discussion (Resumed)

Dr. Barra Roantree:

Apologies. I did not mean to interrupt the Deputy. We have not done that. In principle, it is possible. The best people to do it might be Revenue or the Department of Social Protection. It is something that is knowable but it is not something that we have done. Regarding the Deputy's suggestion relating to tax, in previous work, we have suggested that rather than changing the marginal rate of relief from 20% to 40%, we could instead do something like an SSIA. It would be like what is being proposed but for a smaller, selected base, in addition to the tax relief. That gets at the group the Deputy is concerned about, which includes those people who are getting 20% relief on the way in and are maybe only paying 20% on the way out. If he is worried about them, it is a matter that could be returned to in two, three or four years. We could determine that we are still worried about that group saving too little and provide a scheme such as the SSIA, which would be targeted specifically at those people.