John Crown (Independent)

I apologise to my colleagues for being absent from the Chamber for the last few hours. We were meeting a visiting delegation of cancer researchers from Harvard who are trying to develop collaborations which will be to the advantage of our country.

As I mentioned a few nights ago in a different context, I strongly believe one of the most frustrating things being reported to me regularly by friends and colleagues, including people in the accounting profession, is the fact that a large number of individuals in this country are either under a groaning debt of negative equity or have their life choices severely curtailed by the collapse in the value of the real estate market. People are making decisions about their children's education, changing jobs and their willingness to invest in businesses based on the fact that their core and most valuable asset has been so devalued.

At the same time, many people were prudent and followed the Government's advice, that the right time to save for a rainy day is when the sun is shining, by putting money away in Government-approved pension schemes, to the maximum allowable amount in some cases and lesser allowable amounts in others. This tied up what would have been their savings, the money they would have used to pay down debt or what they would have used to make other entrepreneurial choices. They cannot access this money due to current pension law.

Everybody understands why pension law was formulated in that way. It was to provide people with a good pension, give them an appropriate tax incentive for it and to ensure that people were within the tax net. However, circumstances have clearly changed. We are facing an emergency whose scope and scale nobody anticipated five or six years ago. I urge the Minister to consider the possibility of amending current pension law to allow those who are under burdens of debt but who have substantial amounts of money saved in pension funds to get premature access to these funds, with the appropriate tax payment. This would give the Government revenue now rather than at some indefinite time in the future when pensions mature. It would enable individuals to get out from under the crushing burden of personal debt and it would also restore liquidity to the banks. There would be significant social and financial benefits. The amount that could be realised might be considerable given that privately held Irish pension fund wealth is valued at approximately €100 billion, which equates to between €20,000 and €25,000 for every citizen. Even if a small proportion was brought into circulation and tax paid on it, etc., it could have a beneficial effect.

Will the Minister of State also consider a more speculative idea, which is to put incentives in place that would encourage pension fund managers to reinvest some of the money, 99% of which is held outside the State, locally? One wonders whether a repatriation bank could be set up. We keep hearing of the need for short-term lending and small loans for small businesses both to enable them to survive given their current debts and to fund the entrepreneurial ideas and expansions, which might help to restore our economy. Some 5% or 10% of the €100 billion held outside the State could be reinvested in a guaranteed local bank, which followed strict old fashioned bank rules - not the kind that led us into such ruin - and which was specifically set up with the goal of providing prudent, cautious loans to people of proven creditworthiness who have ideas which require funding; this might be an additional net source of income in our economy. I thank the Minister of State for his attention.