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

I thank the Deputy. This is a problem we have been working on for quite some time. We are struggling to come up with a solution, one that I am very familiar with from my time as Minister for Social Protection. There are many defined benefit pension schemes that currently have very large deficits. The solution, as I understand it from Deputy Penrose's Bill, is to make the employer liable for any deficit. There is a real difficulty in that because we could have a company with thousands of employees that is working well and making a profit but if we load on that company a pension deficit of hundreds of millions of euro, it might become insolvent. In trying to protect the pensions of some, therefore, we may cause hundreds of people to become unemployed.

We have a difficulty with the semi-State organisations as well. Quite a number of them have very large deficits and if those deficits are put on the balance sheets of those companies, they would have to curtail their investment plans. That would include companies like ESB, for example, and if ESB cannot invest in the energy network and renewable energy, we have some serious problems. While I believe the Bill is well-intentioned, the unintended consequences could be very serious in terms of closing down businesses, job losses and us having to curtail our infrastructure plans. I ask the Deputy's party to reflect on that.

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