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

The Minister is very advanced in producing legislation in this area in the form of amendments to the existing Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill that is before the Houses. The legislation will require employers to give adequate notice and establish a dispute solving mechanism, perhaps involving the Pensions Authority. We need to bear in mind the enormous risks that could arise in making employers legally responsible for any deficit in a pension fund. That could result in the loss of jobs if it were to make a company insolvent or impose big losses on it. In other cases, it could hobble companies. For example, a company that has big investment plans - the Deputy referred to such plans - might find that it could no longer have those plans if its balance sheet was changed fundamentally from being one that enabled it to borrow to invest to one that did not enable it to do so because a pension liability had been included in it. We need to bear all of these things in mind. We always debate two laws in this House - the law in front of us and the law of unintended consequences. Therefore, we need to make sure we get it right.

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