John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister well in her new role. I have a degree of sympathy for her because the Bill was initiated by the previous Minister. The concept at the time was to have the Bill enacted before the summer. What we are presented with here is incomplete. Other speakers have alluded to that.

Before I refer to the Bill, I will correct a comment made by Deputy Coppinger when she spoke about Deputies who were in business. She talked about businesses generally and that they could go into liquidation and have to wind up. I have been in business for a long number of years and many people I know have run small businesses. They get a bad press. The Deputy failed to indicate that most people running small businesses give personal guarantees. That is how the businesses functions. I am a director of a local enterprise centre and I see people constantly risking everything they have to run their businesses. This is a side of the argument that was not put here today. The argument put here today is a misportrayal of the situation. We should be encouraging our entrepreneurs. Small businesses give huge employment to hundred of thousands of people in this country and we should not be as dismissive as were the comments made earlier.

I will refer to the issue of pensions and in particular the State pension. A number of people have referred to it this afternoon. The committee has looked at it and this afternoon laid a report before the Minister. The Taoiseach, who was the Minister, appeared before the committee and informed us that the Department is looking at a new model. The committee found the current system inequitable. Two people can have paid the same contributions and get different rates of pension payment. The averaging system has an in-built unfairness. The earlier a person works, the probability is that his or her pension will be somewhat less than someone entering the workforce later and having a full record. Whether it is a total contribution system or a universal system, I urge the Minister to act on it with some urgency. One of the specific things that compounded the situation, in particular for married women who have left the workplace, was the 2012 change where the number of bands was increased. The committee is specifically recommending those bands be reverted until the new system, whether it is a total contribution or universal pension scheme, is introduced. Those changes have adversely affected married women who left the workplace because they dropped down a band as a result. There was some margin of error in the bigger banding system. By introducing new bands, many people have fallen to a level they would not have anticipated. It is unfair on them and as a temporary arrangement it should be reversed. It is not my view, but that of the committee, that it should be reversed until such time as a new scheme of pensions is introduced which should be fairer from the outset. This one was not in that regard.

I will not refer to every section of the Bill. I will refer to a number of them that received particular attention at committee. The first relates to the guardian payment which is section 3. The committee welcomed it. Deputy O'Dea quite adequately explained the guardian payment was directed at the child and consequently would not have an impact on means testing. When the committee was considering this, the members welcomed the change for guardians but concerns were raised that the same principle was not being applied to maintenance payments. People may argue that the maintenance payment is a general payment. I am asking the Minister, now that she has time over the summer and before we come back to committee, to reconsider the issue of maintenance payments where a payment is directed towards a child so that a maintenance payment would receive the same rights as the guardian payment. I am making the point where the maintenance payment is directed at a child.

Section 4 has received a great deal of discussion and debate. This relates to the publication of the names and addresses. Certainly from the committee's point of view there is very significant opposition to it. The Minister heard all of the arguments here earlier today, in particular on data protection and secondary or other unforeseen consequences of publishing those names. I will read the numbers into the record because people have used them time and time again. I tabled a question to the Department and the officials gave the numbers. The scale is important. While people have expressed concerns about producing a list and naming people, the people who spoke are very clear they are totally opposed to fraud and that fraud deprives someone else. We are very clear on that. It was in that regard I asked the question so we could have the scale and the context. The Department very kindly provided the information on the value of overpayments in cases finalised in the courts during 2016 where prosecutions were taken under the Social Welfare Act. It found there was no overpayment in two cases; under €1,000 in no case; between €1,000 and €5,000 in 39 cases; between €5,000 and €10,000 in 25 cases; between €10,000 and €20,000 in 33 cases; between €20,000 and €50,000 in 19 cases; between €50,000 and €100,000 in nine cases; and above €100,000 in three cases. Of those in which the Probation Act was used, the figures were under €1,000 in no case; between €1,000 and €5,000 in 15 cases; between €5,000 and €10,000 in nine cases; between €10,000 and €20,000 in eight cases; between €20,000 and €50,000 in three cases; and between €50,000 and €100,000 in one case. The reason I read those figures out is that we sometimes think they involve a couple of thousand euro here and there. To get up to a level of overpayment of €50,000 or €100,000, some of these cases had to be going on for very extended periods. This needs to be dealt with sensitively and proportionately but it should not become the centre of the Bill because it has the potential to dominate the whole discussion. I wanted to read those figures into the record so that if somebody wants to look at them or comment on them, they will be commenting on facts. It is mind-boggling when one thinks of somebody receiving overpayments of €20,000 or €50,000 or €100,000. They are astronomical figures. The Minister can read into it as she will.

Head 5 has been removed; it is not a section in the Bill. It was to do with the reduced payment following conviction of fraud. When I saw it deleted from the Bill I was pleased because if somebody goes to court and receives a sentence or a fine that is the punishment. This seemed to be an arbitrary additional punishment. The standard rate for reclaiming an overpayment is 15% and this proposed up to 25% which seemed excessively punitive. Will the Minister confirm that, while it is not in the Bill as published, she has no intention of reintroducing that provision? I will leave it at that.

The one concern that came up about the public services card was that it would become mandatory the more it is used and the more common it becomes. That is the concern members have. Perhaps as the Bill develops it is important that issue is dealt with. The real glaring omissions are the ones around the pension. I will not go over the debate that took place in committee. The original heads of the Bill were published in May. As a committee we were conscious that once the heads of the Bill were published the cat was out of the bag and everybody knew what would be done.

The committee was very concerned to facilitate the passage of that Bill as quickly as possible because we did not want an employer or a pension fund taking advantage or jumping ahead of what was being proposed. Like others here, I express the concern that commencing a Bill today which will not be completed for several months is not ideal. I hope my concerns are not realised and that people do not take advantage of the situation. However, it is a cause of concern. Once the heads were published in May, the clock started ticking. People are looking at it and know the Minister's intention. They do not know the detail of how she will get to where she is going, but they know her intention. That is a weakness and I share the concern of others.

I wish to refer in a little detail to what was contained in heads 12 and 13. While they are not in the Bill as presented, we know the Minister intends to introduce amendments similar to these. Head 12 sought to address the problem where employers may cease making contributions to defined benefit schemes without prior notice to members. Such notice periods are normally set out in trusts of deeds, and rules and vary from scheme to scheme, with some trust deeds making no provision for a notice period. The head would require employers who sponsor defined benefit schemes, whether those schemes are in deficit or not, to give 12 months’ notice of their intention to cease contributions. A shorter period may be agreed between the trustees and the employer, following consultation with the members and in circumstances where it is not contrary to members’ interests. The purpose of the 12 months’ notice is to ensure employees and trustees are properly notified that it is to occur and that they have time to plan accordingly. Where a scheme is in deficit, employers will be obliged to enter into discussions with the trustees of the scheme to agree a funding proposal if one is not already in place. Employers will be obliged to continue contributions in line with the current contribution rate during the notice period. If there is a funding proposal in place, the employer will be obliged to continue to pay contributions in accordance with the terms of that proposal for the duration of the 12-month period.

Head 13, following on from the Pensions Act, provides for the submission of a funding proposal by the trustees to the Pensions Authority where a scheme is in deficit. In some circumstances, however, employers are not engaging with this process and a funding proposal cannot be agreed, thus triggering the wind-up of the scheme. Head 13 was to provide powers to the Pensions Authority to determine a schedule of employer contributions to restore defined benefit pension schemes which do not satisfy the funding standard to an adequate funding position in a specified set of circumstances, most notably where the trustees have not submitted a funding proposal or where the employer has not engaged with the trustees to develop and agree a funding proposal. The schedule of contributions specified by the Pensions Authority will be an enforceable debt on the employer. I will not read any more, but those provisions form the crux of it.

While the committee did not deal with this at pre-legislative scrutiny, I suggest that the subsequent meeting with representatives of the Pensions Authority and IBEC would be worth referring to. The representatives of the Pensions Authority stated they did not seek these new powers. The employers' concern is with the enforceable debt. From this point of view I can see why the drafting has not been concluded. The legislation, as proposed, makes no reference to whether the employer can afford that payment in terms of the viability of the business to meet the funding. That needs to be dealt with specifically. There is a voluntary scheme into which employers have entered. There is a funding standard which may or may not be appropriate, but that is the standard to which the Pensions Authority is working. When that funding standard is not being met, the company has to make up the shortfall as dictated to by the Pensions Authority without due reference to the ability of that company to do so. That has to be included. It is not possible to have one or the other. It has to be a combination or else the whole viability of the company is threatened. If two companies are in competition and one is funding a pension scheme and the other is not, the costs to the company that is funding can be significantly higher. I am not advocating that companies do not meet their liabilities. However, from a legislative point of view it is important that a balance is achieved in terms of what the company has to do to meet the funding standard, but on the other hand, it should not jeopardise the existence of the company.

I also want to talk about head 14, which is not included as a section at this stage, but I understand it is to be included. The committee met representatives of Pensions Equality, who have also been in direct contact with the Department. I welcome that they have been advised that appropriate amendments will be introduced. Head 14 was to provide for a measure seeking to ensure same-sex spouses and civil partners of members of occupational pension schemes with marriage age clauses will be able to obtain, in certain circumstances, a spouse’s pension. I understand this applies to a relatively small group of people - perhaps 20. The representatives of Pensions Equality made their case very well at the committee and have made it directly to departmental officials. I hope the Minister will be able to introduce an appropriate amendment on Committee Stage.

I started by mentioning the pensions report we brought here. I finish on pensions generally. As others have mentioned, the majority of people are reaching retirement at 65 and the pension age is 66. That is why one of the biggest age cohorts of people in receipt of job seeker's payments are 65 year old people. We need to address that properly. One of the proposals - it is not the only proposal - is the Sinn Féin Bill to address that mandatory retirement age. The Government needs to consider how that could be addressed in a speedy way. Someone suggested that it might require a money message. I find that hard to see. I really do not know what the blockage is. I would like to see that Bill done in parallel with the Minister's Bill.

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