Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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108. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection for an update on the establishment of the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50696/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Programme for Government contains a commitment to introduce the Automatic Enrolment (AE) Retirement Savings System. The aim of introducing AE is to address the pension coverage gap that exists in Ireland and to provide workers with greater comfort and security regarding their retirement income. The new system - to be known as My Future Fund - will commence from 1 January 2026.

My Future Fund will automatically enroll all employees, aged between 23 and 60 years of age, who are earning €20,000 or more per year (across all employments), and who are not actively contributing to a supplementary pension scheme through their employer's payroll. Those who fall outside the age and earnings threshold will be able to join My Future Fund by voluntarily opting in.

Contributions into 'My Future Fund' will be made by the employee and matched by their employer. In addition, the State will top-up participants' funds at the rate of €1 for every €3 that the employee contributes.

Implementation of 'My Future Fund' is well underway. Most recently I announced the names of the members of the Board, including the Chair, and the Chief Executive Officer of the National Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings Authority (NAERSA), which is the statutorily independent body being established under the aegis of my Department to run the new scheme. Staff recruitment is at an advanced stage and this new body, eventually consisting of up to 50 staff, will be based in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. The premises will be ready in the coming weeks and, as it will be in Letterkenny, will be located near the Irish premises of TCS (Tata Consultancy Services), which is the contracted managed service provider to administer the scheme on behalf of NAERSA. I expect that NAERSA will be formally established next month.

Great progress has been made across several other workstreams and with multiple stakeholders, including with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); with the the Revenue Commissioners, on whose payroll-related data NAERSA will determine eligibility; with Payroll Software Developers who are modifying their systems to calculate and deduct My Future Fund contributions and report on those to NAERSA; and with 3 different investment managers (Amundi, Blackrock and Irish Life Investment Managers) who will invest these contributions in accordance with rules set out in the legislation.

Parallel to these workstreams, a three-phased communications strategy continues to be rolled out. Over the summer we concentrated on raising employee/participant awareness with the ice-cream advertisement over the full range of media platforms. The current focus is on increasing awareness with employers. Thousands of employers and related professionals in HR and payroll have been directly reached through webinars, conferences and in person stakeholder meetings in recent months. Additional campaigns targeted at employers and employees will be run in the coming months in advance of the launch in January 2026, and for some time afterwards as well. An information hub with several useful resources exists at www.gov.ie/autoenrolment.

I hope this clarifies matters for the Deputy.