Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

My focus is on section 33 of the Bill which will have very serious consequences for workers in the airline sector. Why is the Minister facilitating solvent companies in taking thousands of workers out of a pension scheme, particularly when negotiations have not finished? The provisions will have a devastating impact on the workers who paid into the scheme, as they will lose up to 50% of their income.

Like all of us, the Minister will have received letters and emails from staff in Aer Lingus, the Dublin Airport Authority and SR Technics. One correspondent makes the point that part of the reason there is a danger of collapse in the scheme is the failure of Aer Lingus to fund it properly, coupled with the fact that a previous Government implemented cost reduction measures which saw many people leave the airline at 55 years of age, which was very early in their working lives. Huge amounts of money were paid out as a result. Previous Government policies therefore ate into the contributions. All of the e-mails written anticipate a 50% loss of income when these workers retire. In other words, they face poverty in their old age, having paid into the scheme for 20 or 30 years.

These are solvent companies. Aer Lingus made a profit of €39.5 million last year. Its passenger numbers increased by 12%. The Dublin Airport Authority made a profit of €26 million, also seeing an increase in passenger numbers.

There is no reason these companies cannot contribute and sustain a viable pensions scheme.

This is part of the race to the bottom, whereby pensions are to be raided and cut back to facilitate companies. The Minister is well aware of SR Technics, as many people who live in the Dublin West and Dublin North constituencies worked there. The company was closed in February 2009, with the loss of 1,100 jobs. These losses were needless, as it was viable for the company to conduct other business or it could have been taken over by the Government. The workers were dumped on the scrapheap a few years ago and will now find out, whenever it emerges from the four walls of this Chamber, that they will lose 50% of the pensions scheme and have no say in whether they are taken out of or left in it. Recently I visited the picket line of the Aer Lingus cabin crew and all of the workers used the phrase "race to the bottom". They see management of Aer Lingus trying to get rid of them off the books by using bad rotas and attacks on their conditions. They will be replaced by a flexible bunch of young people who will be chewed up and spat out without any pension liability.

Major pension companies have been exhorting governments and employers to get rid of workers from defined benefit schemes into defined contribution schemes, to the extent that it is anticipated that one third of those in such schemes will be lost by 2020. This is part of a policy of employers and the Government. Some 65,000 workers have been affected by the loss of these schemes since 2008 and many more are on the verge of collapse. It seems the Government and the Minister are facilitating workers in ending up in these situations with, effectively, a gun to the head in the negotiations under section 33 of the Bill. Companies are using the recession to rationalise and cut back and every worker knows that pensions are up for grabs. It is scandalous that the Government is facilitating this. When word gets out, whatever losses were suffered in the recent local and European elections will become serious when workers in various constituencies find out that the Government is allowing this to happen.

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