Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to request a debate in the coming weeks, and sooner rather than later, before we finalise the Finance Bill, on the pension cap. Colleagues may be aware that in the run-up to the budget, along with colleagues in Fórsa and IALPA I started a campaign to try to get the pension cap, which is currently at €2 million, indexed linked. This was set by the then Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, in 2013 for very good reasons back then. However it now needs to be index linked to allow it to be reflective of what the value of €2 million today would be.

I know all of my colleagues would have received correspondence from IALPA and Fórsa asking them to support this measure. This was turned down by the Minister of Finance and I understand why. There was an anticipation that it would only look after elites and incredibly well-off people. However, we can see from the commentary in the media over the last week that we have a much-needed vacancy in An Garda Síochána, that of the deputy commissioner. The eight assistant commissioners who are primed and best placed to be the new deputy commissioner will not apply for the role because of the pension cap and the enormous bill it would impose on their salaries and pensions when they retire. It is ludicrous that we have a situation where there are eight highly qualified assistant commissioners with training and experience in An Garda Síochána who will not apply for the next position up in the job because of a pension cap that is ten years old and out of date. Even a brief debate of 60 minutes with the Minister for Finance would be useful to talk about the merits of updating the cap that was introduced in 2013. In fairness, it was introduced at the time to stop developers and builders who had hoards of money from putting it into their pensions as opposed to giving it to the likes of NAMA or any of the institutions that were around at the time, knowing of the difficulties we were suffering with regard to the building industry at that time. The cap has had its time and it needs to be index linked. I would like to request a debate on the matter