Seanad debates

Monday, 30 April 2012

Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2012: Committee Stage (Resumed)

 

The country is in a programme and if citizens agree to support the referendum, we will have access to the ESM which will give us access to funding. People advocating a "No" vote are saying they will advocate some alternative source of funding as yet unidentified by them. If there was a consolidation of the eurozone and a much stronger growth and investment pact within the eurozone, alongside the fiscal consolidation implied in the stability treaty, one could envisage having products relating to green energy - for example, building up the use of wind power in Ireland for sale into the wider European market in which pension funds could invest. If one was to do that with Irish pension funds or with anybody else's pension funds, one would have to have quite a conservatively structured product which would offer a return over a very long period time - perhaps an investment of approximately 30 to 35 years. That is the kind of product in which pension funds would be interested in having a percentage of their investment. That is certainly what people like Jack O'Connor, the president of SIPTU, and David Begg, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, have referenced on a number of occasions.

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