Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----as Minister I commissioned the OECD to do a report to look at the situation of people who only have the State retirement pension. It is a relatively good retirement pension by comparison with most countries, but it is a tight income for those who retire only on that. The OECD recommended that we establish, as has been done in Australia and New Zealand, either a mandatory or a soft mandatory, opt-in or opt-out, universal pensions savings scheme. The group is going to look at the nuts and bolts of how we would do that. This has been done in Australia, New Zealand and, in recent years, in the UK. It has been the subject of successive reports, particularly to previous Ministers in my Department, in Green Papers and White Papers. I hope we will be able to undertake this. We could only undertake it as the economic recovery gets under way and people's income improves because essentially people would be saving additional money for their retirement and those structures must be established.

On Aer Lingus, it is a matter for the Whips if there is to be a debate on that. The Whips can arrange a discussion on that.

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