Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Employers and employees pay into that trust and have benefits that are projected. However, they are neither guaranteed by the employer nor by the State. What Independent News and Media has done will have to be subject to the approval of the High Court. I have spoken to the Pensions Authority and the Attorney General about what could be done in that case. I know that in a different case the High Court adjudged that Aer Lingus would have to consult the trustees of its pension fund before it restructured its capital. The matter needs to be heard in the High Court. I am consulting the Pensions Authority and the Attorney General over what role the State might be able to play in the public interest in that regard.

Some of the things that have been said about the rules being different in the United Kingdom are not quite the case. The rules in the United Kingdom are better and they protect defined benefit pensioners in a better way, but the pension protection fund in the United Kingdom only works where the company is insolvent. This company is not insolvent. That protection fund was built up through levies on those pension funds for years. We have not had such levies. We had a levy for a brief period but we have not had 30 or 40 years of levies on pension funds to build up such a fund. Even if we were to set it up now, it would be empty and of course it could not apply retrospectively. In the United Kingdom, it is the case that employers can withdraw from defined benefit pension funds, but they have to clear the deficit before doing so. They can and do withdraw. It happens regularly. Again, any law that we would apply in that regard in Ireland could not be retroactive. It could only apply to future deficits and liabilities.