Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)

I welcome the auto-enrolment scheme. It will be very positive for a lot of workers across the country. I question the delays in relation to it. It is such an important aspect for particularly middle- and low-income earners and I urge the Government to prioritise its roll-out. However, I have some concerns. These concerns relate to compliance and to SMEs. SMEs are already struggling with the cost of insurance, the cost of doing business, the cost of energy and all of that and I hope this would not be another cost for SMEs. There should be a careful analysis in the years ahead. I appreciate that this is a scheme that will be rolled out incrementally. That is a positive thing but I urge the Government to tread carefully. Also in respect of compliance and the setup costs, I urge the Government to ensure support is available for SMEs, particularly very small companies, to assist with the various elements of compliance that will be necessary as regards an employee leaving a company, re-enrolment and employees opting out. All of that type of stuff should be led by the Government.

I will also highlight the self-employment sector. The self-employed individual is in many ways the forgotten citizen of this State. He or she is a second-class citizen of this State and the auto-enrolment scheme will do nothing for the self-employed person. I urge the Minister to develop a similar scheme that will assist a self-employed individual in this regard. I know this auto-enrolment scheme does not facilitate or give an opportunity for the self-employed person to receive a pension in this way. In that sense, it is unfair because the self-employed person is paying so much tax but does not receive the benefit of social welfare and so on when he or she falls on hard times in the same way that he or she would if an employee of a company. In this case, we could have examples where there is a very small company, that is, a self-employed person, who will not receive the matched funding that an employee can. That is unfair. I urge the Government to develop a scheme that facilitated the self-employed. There is no question that these self-employed individuals are second-class citizens in this State and this auto-enrolment is another example.

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