Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 46, after line 29, to insert the following:

Insert the following section after section 10:

"Provision of information on deferred members.

10A.—The Board shall have the authority to compel relevant organisations and companies to provide information as to the number of each of their deferred members, and such other information as the board may, from time to time and in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Acts 1988 to 2003, require.".".

I do not wish to labour this point but we had only a brief discussion on the matter last night so I will finish what I wanted to say. I wish to impress upon the Minister the importance of including this provision in the legislation. I welcome the fact that he said the results of the survey would be available tomorrow and he might let me know when I will be able to obtain a copy.

The amendment does not just relate to deferred members but to other information as required by the board. A Green Paper on pensions will be published in the middle of April, which may throw up other areas in which further information is required of the Pensions Board. I do not want to go through the same lengthy process in getting information from the Pensions Board as I had to in getting information on deferred members. It is grossly unfair to spend 12 years seeking information from the Pensions Board. If, on reading the Green Paper on pensions, we find we need further information from the Pensions Board the board should be in a position to get that information as quickly as possible from the relevant companies, for Members as well as the Minister.

My amendment seeks to strengthen the powers of the Pensions Board so that it is in a position to ask companies for information. That is not too much to ask. The Minister did not answer my question as to why he was not willing to give those powers to the Pensions Board. He said that companies had co-operated fully with the board but it has taken considerable time, even since Mr. Brendan Kennedy promised to provide the information. I suspect the delay has been caused by the fact that the Pensions Board has not had the powers in years past to get the information. Therefore, I again ask the Minister to accept the amendment in the interest of transparency and expediency when we require information. Yesterday I promised the Minister that I would outline some of the correspondence that individuals have had with the Pensions Board on securing the information on deferred members. In a reply in 1995 Mr. Horgan from the Department of Social Welfare stated:

The Department of Social Welfare in conjunction with the Pensions Board have commissioned a detailed survey of occupational pension cover in Ireland in order to establish the extent and level of pension coverage in this country. The results of this survey will yield the statistics regarding deferred pensioners and their entitlements.

However, that survey did not provide the information we require on deferred pensioners. In 1998 Mary Hutch from the Pensions Board stated, "The queries posed by you in relation to deferred frozen pensions will be considered in the context of the next such survey to be carried out by the Board." We still did not get the results of that. I do know whether the Pensions Board got the information, but I have not been able to see the results of that survey.

In 2000 Mary Hutch from the Pensions Board stated, "There has not been any national survey of pensions since the ERSI survey of 1995 and therefore, I do not have any more up to date information since then." The board either had or did not have the information on the deferred members. Again in 2000 Mr. Eamon Heffernan of the Pensions Board stated, "I am sorry you have not been able to get the information you require." I am just quoting the relevant points from the letter highlighting my inability to get information from the board. In 2001 Michelle Cusack of the Pensions Board stated, "The regulations require that numbers of active members only be furnished, as it is on the basis of those numbers that the fees payable to the Board are calculated."

It speaks volumes that the Pensions Board is only interested in active members. While I do not have its mission statement, surely it exists to look after the interests of those who take out pensions regardless of whether they are active or retired. I imagine it should also include those who are retired. As they get fees from active members' policies or from the industry, it is only interested in those, which is not good enough. If we want a clear picture of how our pensioners or those about to become pensioners are doing with their pension plans we need to have full information from the board, which needs to be in a position to provide it.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when the country was not in a very good economic state many people were being made redundant. Approximately 400,000 were made redundant in 1990. All those people will have frozen benefits and will be coming up to retirement or may have already retired. I want to know what kinds of pensions those people have. I have a very good idea, because I know many of them. These are the people I have been trying to represent in trying to establish how well or badly their pensions have served them. They have frozen benefits and no indexation and yet nobody from either the Pensions Board or the Department seems to be concerned about these pensioners with very poor pensions. All we hear about is encouraging young people to take out pensions. How can we encourage people to take out pensions if we do not know how well they are doing?

Many companies have let down their employees by changing their pension plans from defined benefit to defined contribution. They also do not provide indexation. These issues need to be addressed. I hope they will be highlighted in the Green Paper and that changes will be made in order that young people who decide to pay into a pension plan today do not experience what happened to their parents and grandparents before them.

Pensions to date have been driven by the industry. I am not against people making profit — that is what runs our country. However, I am opposed to them running their businesses at a profit for themselves at the cost of the ordinary worker, with the Government and Pensions Board standing by and not addressing the problems. We know the industry is doing very well and making large profits. The chief executives and others at the top of those companies are retiring on enormous pensions. They are getting lump sums of in excess of €5 million and a very nice index-linked pension for their retirement. While they look after themselves, they preside over a business that does not look after the majority of people who have paid into pensions over the years.

I commend the Minister on having published the green paper. I regret he will not be there to see it through and implement changes that I believe are necessary.