Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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33. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she is considering introducing new pensions legislation to protect former employees who deferred their pensions; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39158/14]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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The Pensions Act provides for the preservation of benefits for members of occupational pension schemes who leave employment before their normal pensionable age for any reason, other than death, provided they satisfy certain qualifying conditions. The preserved benefit is a proportion of the long service benefit to which the member would have been entitled if he or she had remained in employment until normal pensionable age.

If a members long service benefit is provided for under the rules of the scheme on a defined contribution basis, then the value of the preserved benefit at the date on which it becomes payable is equal to the accumulated value of the appropriate contributions.

The preserved benefit which is payable from a defined benefit pension scheme will normally be revalued annually by the lower of 4% or the rate of change in the Consumer Price Index.

Section 50 of the Pensions Act provides for the restructuring of the benefits in a defined benefit pension scheme in situations where the scheme does not satisfy the scheme funding requirement as set out in the Pension Act. In the event that the trustees of a scheme are considering a restructure of scheme benefits under this provision, they can consider adjusting the benefits of both active and deferred scheme members. The Social Welfare and Pensions (No. 2) Act 2013 extended the provisions in section 50 to include a portion of benefits payable to pensioners. Under this change, the pensioner benefits are protected up to €12,000 per annum, benefits over €12,000 and less than €60,000 can be reduced by up to 10% while benefits over €60,000 can be reduced by up to 20%.

These provisions in section 50 of the Act essentially provide for the sharing of the risk of scheme underfunding across all scheme members. The issue of how these changes might be applied is a matter for the trustees of a scheme who are required under trust law to act in the best interests of all scheme beneficiaries.

There are no plans at this stage to bring forward amending legislation to enhance the present provisions in the Act in relation to deferred scheme members.