Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We, in People Before Profit, welcome the fact there is a Bill before the House to deal with the crisis for workers in pensions schemes and how the attack on those pension schemes has become like a corporate grab of workers' money to be put into the coffers of the very wealthy, but there are major weaknesses in this Bill. We will seek to amend it in that, as it stands, it would do very little to stop the effective theft of the pensioners' livelihoods. The Bill would allow schemes to be wound up only with the approval of the Pensions Authority in certain circumstances but what is needed is a very simple Bill whereby companies that are solvent and healthy would not be able to wind up their defined benefit schemes. That would be a much more appropriate response to what is a modern day global attack on the rights of pensioners and workers in general.

I have a list of global corporations extending to 15 pages that have moved in the past few years from having defined benefit to defined contribution pensions schemes. They are household names such as Xerox, Walt Disney, Motorola, The Journal-Register, Remington, Hewlett Packard and Boeing and there are many more that have moved from having defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes. There is a graph with respect to Britain that clearly shows that the number of defined benefit schemes is decreasing while the number of defined contribution pension schemes is increasing. That move is transferring all the responsibility on to the worker. Defined benefit schemes are being presented in the modern world as a problem, an outdated luxury that firms can no longer afford and that companies can no longer put up with. The issue affecting us is not only a local one but a global one. Locally, by which I mean in this state, since 2008, 65,000 workers have been affected by the closure of defined benefit schemes. Some 2,500 schemes of this nature existed a decade ago and today there are only 700. The most recent illustration of this was prior to Christmas with what I would call the raid by Denis O'Brien's Independent News & Media and his cohort of very wealthy people on the retirement earnings of those workers in INM whose pensions had been cut by 40%, many of them moved on to a defined contribution pension scheme and a new proposal was brought in to further cut it by 30%. The effect of this so-called commercially sensible proposal was that the workers, many of whom have worked there for more than 40 years and who would expected to get a pension of €30,000 to €40,000 a year will now see their pension fall to €15,000 to €16,000 a year, despite having made significant contributions to their pension scheme. That is a direct swap from the pockets of pensioners and workers to the pockets of Denis O'Brien and the very wealthy in this country.

INM is an example of that, but we are also seeing that happen in Irish Life, a company that deals with individual and business pensions. If that company, which is a very healthy one in terms of its profits and share of the market, gets away with reducing the pensions of more than 1,000 workers by moving from having a defined benefit to a defined contribution pensions scheme, we will see a domino effect in the financial sector, which has already been affected. Aviva and Permanent TSB have done the same and Pfizer Ireland is about to do the same, as are the Grafton Group and Arnotts, and the list goes on. We are seeing an avalanche of attacks on the pensions and future of workers. The argument being made for this move is that workers are living longer.

I reject this argument. We should be celebrating the fact that workers are living longer instead of seeing it as a problem. What is really happening is that the attempt by the modern capitalist system to eat into the rights of workers is being escalated because it is not making the same profits from financial investments as it did in the past. We should reject it and move to a simple system, whereby if a company was financially healthy, its defined benefit scheme could not be cut. We should outlaw such actions and in so doing protect workers' rights and pensions.

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