Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Sinn Féin supports an auto-enrolment pension scheme. We believe it is the Government's responsibility to foster a retirement framework that ensures workers are financially secure in their retirement. However, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have a poor track record on retirement policy. While Sinn Féin believes workers should have the right to retire at 65 should they choose to, or continue to work if that is not their choice, the two Government parties would deny workers that right. Even after decades of backbreaking physical labour, those parties are comfortable with asking for more work out of workers who want to retire. While Sinn Féin supports an auto-enrolment pension scheme it is disappointing, though not surprising, that whether through intent, incompetence or through the efforts of the Minister’s predecessor this pension scheme does not prioritise workers’ financial well-being either today or in retirement. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis workers will see their take-home pay go down and while the Government will allow them to opt out, it is bizarrely delaying their right to do so by six months.

At the same time workers continue to face a cost-of-living crisis that has not abated. There are spiralling rents, increased college fees and Government supports like the energy credit have been withdrawn. Now the Government is going to reach into workers’ pockets and reduce their take-home pay. Instead of investing this money through the NTMA in things like green energy, which the State and wider society and communities could benefit from, private industry has to get its cut. Perhaps it is the Government’s plan that Irish workers can benefit from institutional investment making a fortune on the back of the housing crisis. Of course, that benefit will accrue should the housing crisis continue to be unaddressed, which is a near-certainty under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Auto-enrolment is a good idea. The compulsory removal from ordinary workers’ pockets today is not. Allowing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to gift these funds to the private pension industry rather than investing them for the good of workers and the benefit of Irish citizens as a whole utterly exposes where those parties’ priorities lie.

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