John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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182. To ask the Minister for Social Protection the action he is taking to ensure that directors of companies who fail to remit employees' pension premiums to their pension contracts immediately before a company goes into liquidation or receivership are prosecuted; his plans to address this issue with particular reference to the definition of the timeframe prior to liquidation or receivership; the number of companies that have failed to fulfil their obligations in this regard; the cost that these failures have been to the State over the past five years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34191/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Under the Pensions Act 1990 employers and trustees have obligations in respect of the remittance of contributions.

Under Section 58A of the Act (occupational pension scheme/trust RACs) and Section 121 of the Act (PRSAs), the employer must ensure that all contributions deducted from the employees’ pay are paid to the trustee/PRSA Provider within 21 days of the end of the month in which the contributions were deducted. Employer contributions payable to a defined contribution scheme in respect of each employee must be remitted within 21 days of the end of the month in which they became payable.

Under Section 59 of the Act, trustees are required to ensure insofar as is reasonable that the contributions payable by the employer and the employees of the scheme/trust RAC where appropriate are received and that the sums are invested within 10 days of the latest date on which those sums should have been remitted or paid by the employer.

The Pensions Authority is the regulator responsible for the enforcement of the criminal sanctions available and it is proactive in the prosecution of offences under section 58A. In 2015 the Authority secured convictions in –

Fourteen cases related to the deduction and non-remittance of employee pension contributions to schemes (Section 58A(1));

Four cases related to the non-remittance of employer pension contributions as obliged under the scheme (Section 58A(2))

When a company is in liquidation or receivership, claims to the insolvency payments scheme are made by a liquidator or receiver on behalf of employees. The purpose of the insolvency payments scheme is to protect certain outstanding pay-related entitlements, including certain pension contributions due to employees in the event of the insolvency of their employer. The scheme covers former employees of companies that are in a formal wind-up procedure such as liquidation or receivership, or situations where the employer has died or been declared bankrupt.

My Department holds figures from 2012 on the number of individual claims (not companies). The number of individual claims received between 2012 and 2015 for pension contributions is 2,742. My Department does not have figures on the total cost of these claims but, in general, individual pension contribution claim payments are for less than €1,100.

Liquidators and receivers operate under the Companies Act, 2014 and are responsible for examining the management of companies and the behaviour of company directors. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation is responsible for all matters relating to company law.

I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.