Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I am concluding on this, and I thank the Acting Chairman for telling me that. I am coming back to my first point, that in the private pension area there are approximately 200,000 people on defined benefit schemes and 150,000 people on defined contribution schemes. Obviously, the latter number is rising because nobody is getting into a defined benefit scheme anymore, and one can understand the reason for that. The funding of pension schemes will be made that little bit more difficult by having that cash reserve in addition to the pension levy, where the Government decided, by way of a jobs initiative, to take €500 million per annum out of private pension funds last year and the same again this year. The pension levy is 0.6% of the value of the funds each year for four years which amounts to €2 billion the Minister is taking out of the pension funds. While the Minister is doing her best to protect the solvency of pension funds, the Minister for Finance was in here last year making sure he would raid them to the extent of €500 million a year for each of the next four years. While one Minister is trying to help the pension fund business and people's pension provision for the future, at the same time another Minister is doing the direct opposite.

We will discuss those matters on Committee Stage. I hope the Minister can reconsider some of the draconian amendments she is suggesting, especially in terms of the one-parent family payment.

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