Congress Expresses Serious Disappointment on Pension Proposals
4 Mar 2010
Congress today (March 3) expressed serious disappointment with the Government proposals aimed at restructuring Ireland's pension provision system. Congress General Secretary David Begg said the proposed new framework fell significantly short in two key areas.
Firstly, they propose to force people to hand over a portion of their wages to the private Pension Industry in order to facilitate gambling and stock market speculation. Given that Irish pension funds - and therefore those who manage them - have been the worst performing in the developed world, this is like a reward for incompetence.
It is also worth noting that the some of the blame for our current financial crisis lies squarely with the foolish investment decisions made by private pension funds....and yet Government proposes to give them even more money. This is wrong.
"The second major failing relates to the absence of any initiative to protect people when a scheme gets into difficulty - a Pension Protection Fund. This is required by law and the workers in SR Technics and Waterford Glass are living proof that it is necessary.
"This is not the response that the crisis in our pension system requires," Mr Begg concluded.
ends