Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The key point is the cash, which the Minister himself mentioned. The fact is that 70% of the money - an extremely large amount of money - is going to the top 20%. The fact that smaller amounts are going to the majority of people in that scheme should not be used as a shield for what is effectively a trickle-up effect. The cap is clearly not adequate if 70% of the benefit is going to top 20% of earners. There are lots of workers in this State who are on the standard rate and who pay 20% of tax and they will only get tax relief at 20%. That is why so few of such workers are in these schemes and it is also why the pension companies predominantly advertise to those on higher incomes. They advertise entirely to those who earn above the marginal rate, at 40%. That is who these schemes are designed for but, to be clear, every worker in the State pays for them. Everybody pays for them. This is public money. The money does not just go to these individuals; it also goes to the private pension industry to a large degree. In many cases, much of the profit model is based on the tax relief that is available. If we have a scheme which effectively requires all of the workers of the State to pay for the top 20% of income earners to get billions of euro in benefits, then we have a problem. It goes against the spirit of progressivity and the redistributive principle. I appreciate that these issues were examined by the Commission on Taxation and Welfare to an extent but they were not examined by the Commission on Pensions and that disjoin is a concern. The following is an issue that came up during our hearings in the Committee on Gender Equality and I expect it will come up further in that regard. A major concern the Minister might not have been able to address at this point but that we might come back to on Report Stage is the gender-proofing issue. We talk a lot about the demographic issue in age, although Ireland is not in as bad a situation as other parts of Europe in that regard. However, the gender pension gap is very significant and it has been a significant concern that the auto-enrolment scheme has not been properly gender-proofed. This private pension tax relief is also not properly gender-proofed. One thing that has been missing from the analysis of the tax relief schemes and the auto-enrolment scheme has been a proper gender analysis and gender-proofing because every pension policy change we make and every existing pension policy we have should be bringing us closer to gender equality and not embedding an inequality that is there already or moving us further apart. I intend to come back on Report Stage and examine the issue of gender-proofing further. While the Minister addressed many of the issues, that is not one we have addressed just now.