Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy is correct in one regard. There are many people who had expectations from their pension schemes, believing they had a guarantee of a particular pension following all their contributions only to find it was not a guarantee and that they were at the mercy of whatever the investment was at the time. There is no doubt that there is an obligation and should be further obligations on pension fund managers etc. to ensure that their clients know the consequences of the payments they are making. As I have indicated the short-term and long-term issues are before Government at the moment.

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