Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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208. To ask the Minister for Finance if a person who is in mortgage distress may cancel a compulsory annuity scheme and receive the cash balance in order to pay the mortgage. [39886/14]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I assume that the reference in the question to a compulsory annuity scheme is a reference to a pension annuity.

The Deputy will appreciate that since I do not have the full details of the particular case to which he may be referring, I can only comment in general terms on the issues raised.

Prior to Finance Act 1999, any person taking a pension from a Defined Contribution pension scheme or a Retirement Annuity Contract had no choice but to purchase a pension annuity with their remaining pension pot after drawing down the permissible tax-free retirement lump sum. Finance Act 1999 introduced options to provide control, flexibility and choice to certain individuals in relation to the drawing down of benefits from their pension plans.

The choices which then became available included the existing option to purchase an annuity with those remaining pension funds, and new options to receive the balance of the pension funds in cash (subject to tax, as appropriate), to invest in an Approved Retirement Fund (ARF) or an Approved Minimum Retirement Fund (AMRF), subject to certain conditions. Access to these flexible options was extended to all main benefits from retirement benefit schemes (other than Defined Benefit pension arrangements) in Finance Act 2011.

Clearly, I cannot say why a particular individual may not have been in a position to avail of any of these options other than to purchase a pension annuity. However, where an individual has agreed or is otherwise contracted to the purchase of a pension annuity and the purchase is effected, I am not aware of any circumstance in which the annuity arrangement may be cancelled as outlined in the question.