Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Norris for his very nice comments and his taste. ARFs are approved retirement funds. All retirement products have taxation implications which can change the nature of the return. In a defined benefit contribution scheme, there is, as the Senator said, a requirement to invest in an annuity-type product. The reason for that is very simple if one thinks about it. In respect of people retiring at 65 and receiving the entire lump sum, there have been many rather unhappy examples over the past decade where people, many of them self-employed professionals in the medical and legal fields with very high incomes, in good faith chose to invest because the then Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, introduced the capacity of individuals to manage their own pension fund. In some cases, about which we have not heard too much, that has possibly worked out superbly, but we are all familiar with people who decided to do something through various mechanisms which appeared to be both profitable and patriotic and put all their retirement nest egg, which was very considerable in some cases, into the shares of one or more Irish banks. The rest is very sad history for some of the individuals.