Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator McDowell for his amendment. I do not propose to accept it because a consequence of this amendment would be further delay to this transformational societal initiative. This has been flagged for nearly 30 years and implementation is well overdue. I believe it is in the best interests of future automatic enrolment, AE, participants to have the scheme up and running as soon as possible.We have discussed it a lot, considered it and designed it. It is time now to just get on with it. Somebody always has a reason not to do something. We need to move on with this proposal.

There is a misunderstanding regarding the investment. The money is pooled for investment. All the members’ money will be pooled into three different pots – low, medium and high risk - and a default pot. It is not separate investments for each person. It will all go into whichever pot they choose, depending on their age and depending on how they are with risk. They will be able to make that decision. It is all pooled into one of four pots.

The Pensions Council is an independent body of experts drawn from the legal and financial world. It is their role to advise me on what they understand to be the best way forward in providing a pensions landscape in Ireland that works best for the consumer. While the Pensions Council has acknowledged that the Fagan proposal is an interesting idea, it ultimately could not recommend it to me as a better alternative to the already agreed auto-enrolment design. The Senator will appreciate that, as Minister, I cannot foist an untested and unproven theory on automatic enrolment participants. I cannot and should not be taking risks with people’s money on an unproven approach and against the advice of the Pensions Council.

For those reasons, I cannot recommend it to the House as an approach. I am not in a position to accept this amendment.