Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for taking this debate. The auto-enrolment scheme is very important. It will mean that Ireland will not longer be a laggard in the European Union. As Deputy Ó Cearúil said, many other countries have brought this in, some as far back as a decade ago. We are catching up. The introduction of this in the new year will see hundreds of thousands of people who are not on pension plans now being able to avail of something when they reach pensionable age. That is quite important.

I do, however, have something of a contrarian view on some aspects of what is proposed. There is not a week that goes by that the owner of some local small business comes to one of my clinics and talks about how difficult it is to do business. I have heard that during my six years as a TD but I probably hear it now more than every because of the multiple costs involved. TDs on both sides of the House are nodding because we are all hearing this at constituency level. There was an inevitability about auto-enrolment happening. It has to happen. In budget 2026, which is only a couple of weeks away, we have to include certain measures that loosen the collar for businesses and allow them to breathe again and flourish. In my home village, the shop and pub are gone. There is nothing to replace them. I see businesses closing on the high streets of Ennis, Shannon and Limerick city. There are too many vape and kebab shops. The type of businesses that were the stock of town centre streets seem to be either going out of business or are really struggling. We have to deal with that in budget 2026.

I have read all the detailed notes on auto-enrolment, but I have not seen sufficient clarity on where apprentices will stand in all of this. I thing of the many 20- and 21-year-olds who are slogging it out doing difficult work, particularly in the wet trades. They are certainly not earning €20,000 per annum. Auto-enrolment will be optional for them. Everything is quite uncertain for them. They are treated as tradesmen and tradeswomen. They are expected to go out and work as hard as everyone else, but they do not get the benefits of doing so.

I fear that some of this could be used as a bit of a carrot in the context of the school secretaries and caretakers dispute. This is not the way to deal with that.

If we were to look at it through one lens, we could say this offered a pathway to pension, but I would contend, as someone who spent 16 years as a school teacher and as the staff liaison person between secretaries, caretakers and the school body, this is not the way to solve their grievance. They are very worthy of a proper pension befitting the work they have carried out for years and will carry out for many years to come. This should not be the magic wand for that. Their ask is very specific. It is before the WRC and we cannot prejudice what is there but they ask that they be treated as civil servants. That is the campaign I support and this issue needs to be kept separate and outside the net of what auto-enrolment is.

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