Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very much open to the idea of a stakeholder forum involving employers, unions and perhaps people who represent pensioners. I would propose to start it off with the new Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, which was recently established.

I will bring proposals to LEEF in the spring. However, I would not be averse to a different form of stakeholder forum, perhaps similar to that which the Deputy proposes. The bridging issue is a real problem. I know some of the better-funded pension funds are making up the difference themselves for the year or two during which the person is aged between 65 and 66 but this is not happening in all cases. We therefore need to find a solution in that space. I accept that this is an issue and will get worse.

Regarding the minimum funding standard, the difficulty I have - this is just the reality I face - is that while many people express the opinion that in Ireland it is too onerous, nobody has been able to prove this. The advice I get from the Pensions Authority and the OECD is that, if anything, our minimum funding standard is too lax compared with those of other countries and I cannot just ignore this advice. It would just not be the right thing to do for people in the medium to long term to relax a standard that the independent experts and advisers say is, if anything, too lax.

See this speech in context