Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister claims this was done on the recommendation of the interdepartmental group on pensions and tax reform but it is a clear misunderstanding of the reading of the group's recommendation, which was to abolish the differential treatment of the PRSA for funding purposes compared to occupational schemes. That was not done. Occupational schemes are benefit-limited. The changes made to PRSAs has totally reversed the position rather than equalised it, with PRSAs now providing a far higher level of free and tax deductible pension funding than under occupational pension schemes. This is a massive amount of money we are talking about. Not everybody is going to be able to do it, but some people are already doing it. The industry is telling people this is how you get your money out of your company. We have a situation now whereby even for somebody drawing a minimum wage, a company owner will be allowed to pump €2 million tax free into a pension pot and to get a tax deduction against their profits in doing so. Before this change was made in June of 2022, the Society of Actuaries warned the Department of the risk and put forward concrete proposals to avoid it materialising. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, rejected these proposals. My question is, why?

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