Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is very relevant from the point of view that the obligations of this scheme, and towards the pensioners in the scheme, may one day end up on the Minister's doorstep both because they are pensioners and because he is responsible for governance in these areas and governance has been found severely wanting in this scheme. It was stated in December 2014 that the funding proposals were on track. They went slightly off track in 2015 but only to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand. Three months later, however, the scheme was unilaterally shut down without consultation.

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That is a severe problem and, if not challenged in this instance, this will be replicated by others. What is the impact of that? It means that every day since then, the employer, in this instance the CRC, has been saving substantial amounts of money at the expense of pensioners. The interests of those people, who have, in my opinion, a lawful right to access alternative viewpoints as to how that funding deficit could be met, have not been met. No other proposals have been put in place.

I know from the Minister's previous brief that he takes his responsibility and his stewardship of Departments seriously. I can honestly tell him that this is one area that deserves his further scrutiny. There are organisations giving advice on our pension schemes that are appearing and popping up on all sides of the balance sheet, as it were. They are giving advice to both sides and it is pensioners who are losing out. Why is there such a clamber and rush to shut this scheme down? There is documentation that states this was being done deliberately to deny consultation to the employees, which the Minister knows is completely against Pensions Authority rules.

I appreciate what the Ceann Comhairle said, and I am trying to be respectful in dealing with the topic on hand. However, according to the Pensions Authority, pension fund trustees are supposed to be looking after the savings on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of people in the scheme. Their obligations are not just to act with minimum compliance with the law but to act in the best interests of those whose retirement savings they are managing. That obligation cannot be answered in respect of the CRC.

Given the scale of the organisations involved in this matter, I urge that we dig deeper. If we do not, given our aging population and the demands on the Exchequer and the Minister's Department, they will come knocking on his door. Not only that, it is absolutely reprehensible that people who have paid into a scheme all their working lives - 44 years in the case of one person who will retire in a couple of weeks' time - would be told that there is nothing for them there and that the scheme is going to be wound up. We have a system of governance. This falls within the Minister's Department. He has a budget. I hope he ups the level of scrutiny applied because it is needed and an avalanche is coming down the hill in respect of this issue.

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