Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I apologise. I was considering the Minister's amendments rather than my own. I sort of spoke to my amendments but will do so again briefly. I referred to the difference between the sizes of pension for someone at the highest level of a company and someone at the low end. While on the pro rata and percentage basis the pain is shared equally, the difference between what those two people take home is massive. We need to examine that from the perspective of equity and fairness. We raise points such as this and about the annuities. We all know that a long-term framework is coming but we do not know what will be in it. We are accepting, rejecting or abstaining on the never-never or in the hope it will contain some of our proposals but we do not know that they will be. We should deal with this now.

Likewise, we should be dealing with the expansion of the PIPs or the annuities. The Minister said in response to Deputy Morgan, I think, that there would be savings for companies in buying the annuities. That is why the scheme should be made available to other companies. I do not see where the temptation is for them to wind up by availing of this but the fact that one can get the annuities at a more competitive rate because the State operates them will take a great deal of the commission out of them. That should be welcomed and rather than driving schemes to insolvency it could have the opposite effect because it would leave more money available within the scheme to pensioners, employees, deferred workers and so on when they become eligible. I would like to see that happening.

What did the Minister tell the Commission is happening in respect of the Robins case? What information did the Commission seek from the Minister and what response did she make? I agree that we will come to the House another day or night and pass some other rushed legislation to deal with something else with which we have not dealt for some considerable time. We will again be making decisions in the dark. That is not acceptable. My amendments concern the same point but in different sections.

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