Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We had a discussion on priority orders last year when we were discussing double insolvencies and the change to how defined benefit should be viewed. We did not have a long enough debate on it in terms of the Mercer report which outlined at the time the various different strategies around how to create a priority order. The Mercer report, which the Minister had, was made available a week or at most two weeks before we started the discussion into something as detailed as this.

Even though there are different parameters here, the existing guideline of the priority order is what most look to. It is indicative of the way one, in this case, the IASS, should go. That does not make it right. If we had all of the information that we now have via the IASS, just as if we had all of the information on Waterford Wedgwood, perhaps we would have come up with a different priority order or we might at least have argued from this side of the House for a substantially different priority order. I did so. I submitted amendments which technically would have been grouped with these amendments if they had been allowed, but the restrictions on Opposition Deputies, or maybe all Deputies other than Ministers, in tabling amendments which are a charge on the Exchequer or a charge on the people - the two separate ones because of a bizarre constitutional block which was highlighted at the Constitutional Convention by me and others - mean that the amendments I tabled on this section were ruled out of order. This makes it a little more difficult to argue positively, although in all of this discussion I do not think there is anybody, either on this side of the House or on the Government side, who is not trying to be positive in relation to the pension outcome, whether in the case of the IASS or Waterford Wedgwood which we discussed previously, or the other DB schemes that are being changed to defined contribution schemes. I have sympathy for the amendments before us because each of them is trying to give a different approach than the current approach.

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